Special Standing Committee

[Mr. David Hinchliffe in the Chair]

Adoption and Children Bill

Memorandum from Norwood Jewish Adoption Society - PART 1 - Chapter 1

Norwood Ravenswood (incorporating Norwood Jewish Adoption Society) welcome the Adoption and Children Bill and broadly support its content. We especially welcome the principle that children's welfare is paramount in the adoption process. 
 We welcome the emphasis that delay is prejudicial to a child and welcome any measures that reduce delay. With this in mind, we are concerned that placement orders will delay decisions for a child unless orders made under both the Children Act 1989 and the Adoption and Children (Act) once enacted are made simultaneously. 
 We welcome the emphasis to be given by adoption agencies on due consideration to the child 's religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background. We know that this enhances a sense of identity and contributes to good mental health. It is imperative that this is considered early in the planning process, so that timescales do not work against the child's heritage needs.

Chapter 2

3.4 We think this clause needs strengthening by regulation to make it mandatory for care (local)authorities to provide multi-disciplinary assessments and plans (directly or indirectly)to ensure that placements out of area follow a multi-agency approach for an individual child through their childhood. 
 3.4. Voluntary adoption agencies need funding from placement authorities in order to offer post adoption support to children placed withtheir approved adopters. Voluntary societies are unable to fund this support (over and above the first year support included in the inter-agency fee). We believe that placement authorities should have a responsibility to fund required support to an adopted child and their family throughout the individual's childhood. 
 4.2. We believe this clause needs strengthening and that a local authority ``should'' rather than ``may'' . . . carry out an assessment for post adoption support services 
 10.2 and 10.3. We welcome the principle of performance standards by registration of social care staff and Managers of services. There is a cost to this, which is a challenge to voluntary adoption agencies, which currently have to access training monies through local authorities. 
 11 Inter-agency fees. Voluntary adoption agencies are traditionally a resource for adopters. Adopters like to be assessed by voluntary societies. This means that voluntary agencies are dependent on interagency placement fees for the costs of their assessment and immediate support activities. Local authorities that have realistic ring-fenced budgets for inter-agency placements offer a speedier service to children through the planning process than those where special approval has to be made for inter-agency placement. In order to meet performance targets to increase placements without delay, we suggest that placement authorities will need to have more flexible budgeting procedures. This will maximise placement choice for children. 
 12 Independent Review Body. We welcome transparency in the adoption process and support any activity that gives clear information to all involved. Because adoption deals with grief and loss for all parties, it is natural that disappointed people would wish to appeal against decisions made by agencies and panels. We support the notion of independent review and recommend that a well-regulated independent co-ordinating body be established that will draw on expertise from the voluntary and statutory sectors to undertake review. We believe that to maintain its independence, it should be funded directly by Government. The use of independent review is a resource challenge to voluntary agencies both in direct costs and staff time.

Chapter 3

20 Unless simultaneous Children Act 1989 and Adoption & Children Act decisions are made simultaneously, serious delay could result for any individual child.

Chapter 6

80.6 Any regulation that would require children brought into the UK to be reviewed/monitored by the Agency who had approved the adopters would have serious financial implications for voluntary agencies. Who would pay for this monitoring role (until the adoption order is made)? If this became a requirement through regulation, it might have the consequence of voluntary agencies withdrawing from inter-country assessment.

PART 2

110 We welcome the concept of special guardianship in relation to children with significant kinship/friendship ties whose family wishes to remain long-term carers, as this would enhance the child 's security by giving parental responsibility to significant adults without severing links of identity. 
 110 There is a view that some ethnic minority communities have religious or cultural difficulties with adoption in the form provided for in the law of England and Wales and that therefore special guardianship is appropriate in these cases. With regard to the Jewish community, in the interests of individual children the concept of adoption (according to the law of England and Wales)is encouraged by orthodox and progressive Jewish religious authorities, although according to (religious) Jewish law the birth status of the child does not alter when the adoption order is made.

PART 3 - Chapter 1

The capacity of the Adoption Register to tackle delay for children will be entirely dependent on adoption agencies, local authorities and courts working within integrated tight time scales that are child focussed. 
 115.4 The register should NOT be open to public inspection or search in order to protect the privacy of children and families.

Memorandum from Jim Richards, the Catholic Children's Society (Westminster) - INTRODUCTION

The Catholic Children's Society (Westminster) is a broad-based childcare agency, founded in 1859, which operates within the Diocese of Westminster. We work with all faiths and those with none. Our area of operation comprises London north of the Thames, Hertfordshire and in respect of adoption, Essex. 
 We have a very long experience in adoption both with regards children in care referred to us by local authorities and placed in families whom we have assessed and though now a lesser part of our work, babies voluntarily placed with us by their often young parents for adoption. In addition, we are heavily involved in the counselling of adults affected by adoption. We help both adult adoptees, as well as birth relatives, acting, when requested as intermediaries between parties when appropriate.

1. THE ADOPTION AND CHILDREN BILL IN GENERAL

The Society has long advocated the need for new legislation, which better reflects the needs of adoption today. Previous administrations, including the present one, have missed opportunities to place legislation before Parliament. We are broadly in agreement with the contents of the Bill, but we are concerned that there is as yet no timetable for its implementation. There needs to be a sense of urgency in this regard.

2. THREE KEY ISSUES

We wish to draw the attention of the Committee to the following: 
 —Post Adoption Support 
 —Access to Information, and 
 —Eligibility to adopt with specific reference to marriage.

3.1 POST ADOPTION SUPPORT

3.1.1 The Recognition in the Bill that adoption is a life-long commitment reflects the reality of good, loving and caring parenthood. This part of the Bill also recognises that many of the children being adopted today often come to adoption with deep emotional scars, which are only healed, if ever, over time and with much pain and struggle on the part of the adopters. 
 3.1.2 The above makes it right that local authorities should be under a duty to provide support services. However, we are concerned that the Bill, as it stands, makes a distinction between the right of an assessment and the provision of services that are highlighted as a result of that assessment. It is our invariable experience that when adopters seek help they know they need it. Adopters do not come forward for help on a whim. They often struggle long and hard before coming for help. They need to know with some degree of certainty that such help will be available. Moreover, we need to create a situation where adopters feel able to come forward at an early stage of the problem, rather than later, when the situation may be that much more difficult to alleviate. 
 3.1.3 The Society runs two specialist centres offering families from all backgrounds help through the medium of family and child psychotherapy. They have both developed a sub specialism in working with families who have adopted. The intervention is often very helpful. It has though proved most difficult to extract funding from local authorities for these services. Regulations, which flow from the legislation need to make it possible for funding in these circumstances to be made available. 
 3.1.4 The duty to provide services should apply equally to Health and Education authorities, as well as local authority social services departments. 
 3.1.5 The regulations need to make responsibilities particularly clear when the care authority for the child is different from the authority in which the adopters live. It is obviously not helpful to a child if a service provided within the care authority is discontinued because the authority where the adopters live is unable to carry on that service. 
 3.1.6 Any legislation dealing with support needs to make it clear that this is available to children adopted now, as well as those adopted after the legislation is implemented.

3.2 ACCESS TO INFORMATION

3.2.1 Adopters need to have information about the child that is to be placed with them before placement, to help them plan and decide. When the child is placed they then need, at that point, as much information as possible to help them care for the child and access necessary services. At our Society we give adopters a full pack of information on the child within four weeks of placement in those cases where the birth parents approach us directly to have their child adopted. 
 3.2.2 With regards children placed by local authorities with adopters we have assessed, it may well be over a year before the Adoption Order is granted. Receiving information at that belated stage will not help the placement. We therefore would wish to see something of the spirit reflected in legislation of the relevant Standard from the National Adoption Standards, which stipulates that ``full written information'' is given to potential adopters before a match is made. 
 3.2.3 We consider that the Clauses dealing with access to information by adult adoptees mark a retrograde step. Allowing birth parents to put a block on certain information being given to their child when an adult, is not modernising the system of adoption but sets it back to the unhelpful secrecy that often pervaded adoption prior to the passing of the 1976 Adoption Act. 
 3.2.4 That Act enabled adopted people to have access to information from their original birth certificates. That change had a profound positive impact on the culture of adoption. It made it much more open at all its stages, because both those directly involved as well as the professionals and courts, knew that adult adoptees may wish to seek this information. The fears expressed at the time that this right would be abused have not been borne out by the experiences of the last quarter of a century of practice. This is not just the finding of this Society, dealing as it does with some 300 to 400 cases a year of adults seeking information, but is also the finding of a growing body of respected research. 
 3.2.5 It needs also to be recognised that most children adopted today will have often lived for significant periods of their lives with their birth parents. 
 3.2.6 It is right that the welfare of the person to be adopted should be paramount and that adoption is a lifelong process. These points need to be followed through in all aspects of the legislation. 
 3.2.7 Perhaps a way forward is to recognise that there is a distinction to be made between the giving of information about birth parents and the making of contact with them. At the Society we have also recognised and respected this distinction. Therefore when we act as an intermediary between an adopted adult who wishes to make contact with their parents and where the latter do not want that contact, we work to help the adopted person accept this situation. 
 3.2.8 Flowing from the above is therefore the need to make the provision of intermediary services a statutory obligation.

3.3 ELIGIBILITY TO ADOPT WITH SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO MARRIAGE

3.3.1 We note and very much agree with the provision in Clauses 47 to 49, that only married couples or single persons may apply to adopt. 
 3.3.2 It is argued that there are many unmarried couples who would wish to adopt and who would be able to provide a good home for a child who are barred because they have chosen not to marry. 
 3.3.3 This position ignores a basic and crucial aspect of adoption. For adoption to succeed there needs to be a total lifelong and public commitment of love and care. If this is our expectation of adopters then it needs to be reflected in their own commitment to each other. 
 3.3.4 We also need to recognise that adoption is created by the state, where its agencies, namely adoption services and the courts, approve a particular couple to care for a child as if it were their own, with all others who may have had a claim, having that claim extinguished. The state therefore is creating a family. 
 3.3.5 If the reported moves to allow co-habiting couples to adopt are successful, we will be in danger of allowing what may seem, at first sight, to be an individual good, to be something that harms what is recognised as a universal good, that is marriage. If this institution is undermined, as it would if co-habitees could adopt, it would make matters worse for many more children. 
 3.3.6 All too often co-habitation is seen as being on an equal footing with marriage. This is clearly not so, as is revealed by the available research, and although this research is not directly about adoption it does have relevance to this aspect of the debate. The two conditions are qualitatively different. With marriage, the couple make a life long public commitment to love and care for each other and their children. This does not exist in co-habitation which can lead to a one generational arrangement without the clear kinship links created by marriage. Such kinship links and the social bonds created give rise to social values. 
 3.3.7 Co-habitation also has a far higher breakdown rate than marriage, with less than 4 per cent lasting ten years or more. 70 per cent of those children born to married parents, will live with them throughout their childhood, in contrast to the 36 per cent of those born to those who co-habit. Married couples are more secure, one with the other. 
 3.3.8 Financial and emotional help to married couples and their children is at a greater level than in co-habiting unions. 
 3.3.9 Co-habitee fathers, when separated, are less likely than divorced partners to financially support the children. 
 3.3.10 The institution of marriage gives structure, a framework for decision making and a sense of meaning. In co-habitation, rules have to be created in a situation where there are no agreed societal norms. The lack of socially approved ground rules is a recipe for ambiguity and ambivalence. 
 3.3.11 There is even evidence which indicates that married mothers have more meals with their children, read to them more and have more outside activities with them, than co-habiting mothers. 
 3.3.12 There are also legal aspects of co-habitation to do with property and therefore the security of the child, should the co-habitation cease, that are less clear than in marriage.

Memorandum from the Catholic Children's Society, Nottingham

The Catholic Children' Society, Nottingham, warmly welcomes the new Adoption and Children Bill. It provides an essential alignment of relevant legislation with that of adoption and provides a framework for services for all parties into the Twenty-first Century. We note that the policy and practice of the Society, in many ways, anticipates the proposed legislation. Aspects of The Bill reflect the Society's input into the Draft Adoption Bill, published in 1996, PIU Report of July 2000 and the various Consultation Documents that the Society has responded to inform the new legislation. We particularly welcome the fact that the Bill will align adoption law with the principles and philosophies of The Children Act 1989.

CLAUSES 3 AND 4: MAINTENANCE OF ADOPTION SERVICE AND ASSESSMENT FOR ADOPTION SUPPORT SERVICES

Our significant experience of placing children from the Public Care system endorses the need for adoption support services, as outlined. This is particularly important in relation to all parties to the adoption process and that such support is at a multidisciplinary and multi-Agency level. The service users of the Society have made us particularly aware of the life-long implications of adoption and we feel a challenge for this legislation is to be sufficiently broad and equitable to meet the needs both of adults and children. We are also aware, due to our current work, of the significant challenges faced by children families who are united by adoption and the importance of support services in sustaining such placements. 
 We welcome also the potential for clarity when Regulations referred to in Clause 4 (7) are produced, as in our experience, the duties and financial obligations often delay or reduce services, especially when inter-Agency placements occur, thus increasing the potential for adoption disruption. The current emphasis on increasing the numbers of adoption and, where necessary, using mechanisms to link children and families across distance, also contributes to the long-term implications of Agencies of working together and ensuring that vulnerable children and families are not left waiting for essential services, due to protracted discussion, and possibly dispute, concerning the appropriate provider and how such services can be financed. 
 We endorse the importance of seeing the whole child and ensuring an approach underpinned by corporate responsibility. We would stress, however, both at this point and at several others in the proposed legislation, that Voluntary Adoption Agencies play a particularly valuable role in complementing and, at times, spearheading the essential adoption work of Statutory Services. We would suggest that the proposed legislation, together with its guidance notes, ensures that the significance of the Voluntary Sector in adoption is stressed at every opportunity and that Local Authorities are given a clear mandate to give every consideration to partnership working when addressing the needs of adoptive children and their families, adopted adults and other key parties who require adoption and post-adoption services. 
 The Society has ample evidence to support this suggestion from its current research project ``Adoption—A Quality Option'', a very successful collaboration in promoting qualitative adoption services with three Statutory Agencies. 
 Whilst acknowledging the considerable and on-going resource implications of implementing this legislation, we would also wish to highlight the need of budgetary management, which ensures clarity when services need to be provided or purchased by Local Authorities. This is particularly the case, as Local Authorities will be required under the legislation to ensure that certain post-adoption services are provided, eg, to assess the needs of adopted children. We are of the view that budgets dedicated to adoption work being routinely available in Local Authorities, will ensure a speedy and appropriate response to the complex situations that can arise once a child is placed from the Care system in a new family. 
 The Catholic Children's Society, Nottingham, has gained significant evidence through twenty years of placing children for adoption on an inter-Agency basis with Councils, of the significant difficulty to secure efficient and appropriate post-adoption support.

CLAUSE 5: LOCAL AUTHORITY PLANS FOR ADOPTION SERVICES

We positively welcome the greater transparency regarding the descriptions of information about plans drawn up by Local Authorities. This move could potentially empower and inform those considering adoption who would benefit from insight into a Local Authority's provisions. It is hoped that this, too, would be referenced by suggestions that plans for services should include collaboration with Voluntary Adoption Agencies.

CLAUSE 10: MANAGEMENT AND CONDUCT OF AGENCIES - CLAUSE 14: DEFAULT POWER OF APPROPRIATE MINISTER

We welcome the comparability across Statutory and Voluntary Sectors regarding expectations and registrations in respect of the management and conduct of Agencies. In particular, we welcome the default power relating to compliance with duties imposed by The Bill.

CLAUSE 11: FEES

We are concerned that recognition is given to the significant contribution made by Voluntary Adoption Agencies to the adoption and post-adoption services throughout the United Kingdom and it is essential that these often innovative and pioneering Agencies are adequately funded and maintained to facilitate the continuing provision of adoption services of excellence. 
 Voluntary Adoption Agencies have readily engaged in accurate castings of their adoption services as part of their strategic professional and financial development, but similar analysis is not always available from the Statutory Sector.

CLAUSE 17: PLACEMENT FOR ADOPTION BY AGENCIES

We welcome clarification of the continuation of the Looked After status.

CLAUSE 20: PLACEMENT ORDERS

We welcome steps which simplify the child's legal route to adoption whilst maintaining such safeguards as are necessary. We endorse this because the threshold becomes comparable between Care Order and Placement Order and, thus, facilitates a twin-tracking approach to adoption, if this is deemed to be in the child's best interest.

CLAUSE 23: REVOKING PLACEMENT ORDERS

We welcome this Clause for situations where children may continue to have been at risk from dangerous family members. Previous legislation allowed the legal challenge after a year if the child was not placed for adoption.

CLAUSE 24: PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY

We are concerned about the change from the current position, which moves parental responsibility from being given at the point of the Adoption Order to a possibly earlier stage. The fact that the level can be determined by the Agency could lead to wide variation. We also have concern that the lack of a clear ``rite de passage'' which is attached to the granting of an Adoption Order may be lost, and we feel that this is regrettable. Research has told us (Adoption Now: Messages from Research—Roy Parker, Department of Health 2000) that children view the granting of the Order and the preparation for that day as being very important to them. The suggestion also creates a potential for too much responsibility being given to prospective adoptive parents at too early a stage. This may prove to be a concern to those thinking about adoption, particularly if they, view parental responsibility as being allied to financial responsibility, shou1d a child's placement disrupt prior to the granting of the Adoption Order.

CLAUSE 49: ADOPTION BY ONE PERSON

In situations where adoption is in the child's best interest, we positively welcome this Clause, as it provides an opportunity for mothers not to have to apply to adopt their own child, which we viewed as unsatisfactory under previous legislation.

CLAUSE 57: DISCLOSING INFORMATION TO ADOPTERS

We are very concerned that this Clause suggests that information is given to adopters after the granting of an Adoption Order. We believe this could render certain placements unstable and lead to a vulnerability for the Agencies responsible for arranging those placements. In our experience, it is essential that full background information is provided to the adoptive pal GI,: J prior to the child being placed with them, as part of the information-gathering process which determines if the placement of that child is right for the child and the family. It is equally important that a detailed assessment has been made of the impact of the child's experiences upon them and a further assessment made as to how those life experiences may affect the child in placement, after the granting of the Adoption Order and into young adulthood. 
 In our experience of twenty years inter-Agency placements, it remains extremely difficult to secure such qualitative information to assist prospective adoptive parents to make informed decisions about the child/children they will parent. It also creates significant difficulties for prospective adoptive parents to understand the behaviour of their child/children placed with them and does not give them the necessary knowledge from which to avoid any 'triggers' of unhappy and frightening memories that children may associate with certain simple family activities.

CLAUSE 58: DISCLOSING INFORMATION TO ADOPTED ADULTS - CLAUSE 59: DISCLOSING PROTECTED INFORMATION IN OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES - CLAUSE 60: COUNSELLING - CLAUSE 61: OTHER PROVISIONS TO BE MADE BY REGULATIONS

We are concerned about the limitations of the disclosure of information to adopted adults. We would have serious concerns about any legislation which created a two-tier system in relation to information concerning identity and background. Our view, based on counselling adopted adults since 1976, is that all adopted adults should have the right to choose to access information about their origins. Any instrument which prevented this would fundamentally disadvantage certain adopted people. It would affect the confidence of adoptive families as they help their children integrate past and present and to move towards possible re-union with birth family members at a future date. It creates additional problems when placed in the context of sibling placements, as there is the potential for different wishes to be expressed in relation to each child. Furthermore, in any placement there is the possibility that each birth parent may express contradictory views in relation to this Clause. We would see this part of the legislation as being an entirely retrograde step. Indeed, the legislators who drew up the 1975 Children Act and the research which informed the provision, are to be congratulated for their understanding of the needs of adopted people. We consider that the implications which arise from these Clauses are the complete antithesis of the spirit and intention underpinning the current legislation and cut across best practice in relation to the users of an adoption service. Whilst respecting the range of issues that may exist for birth parents, we would suggest that issues of this kind should be co-ordinated in the terms of a comprehensive post-adoption service, which offers the appropriate advice, support and information to birth family members throughout the years following an adoption.

CLAUSE 80: RESTRICTION ON BRINGING CHILDREN IN - CLAUSE 83: OVERSEAS ADOPTION

Whilst the Catholic Children's Society, Nottingham, does not provide a service to applicants wishing to adopt from overseas, nevertheless, we welcome wholeheartedly the new tighter controls on inter-country adoption.

CLAUSE 104: AVOIDING DELAY

We welcome the avoidance of delay and the increased focus of the management of the process within the court system. In our experience, there can be substantial delays which originate from the work of the courts and we feel that this legislation takes significant steps to redress that situation.

CLAUSE 110: SPECIAL GUARDIANSHIP ORDERS

Broadly speaking, we welcome the extension of arrangements for children and particularly the requirement that special guardianship support is comparable with post-adoption support. We would emphasise the importance of the child 's needs and wishes and the necessity of adequate resources to develop, manage and monitor this additional option. We would hope that Local Authorities are in a position to look creatively at the provision of such services and, in particular, at the possibility of a role for the Voluntary Sector, and that the Government will ensure that this new option for children is adequately monitored. There are likely to only be a few examples of the use of this provision in each Local Authority in any one year and it may be expedient to build into these arrangements agreements sought from key parties to participation in the researching of the arrangements. This would simplify evaluation of the working of this option and reduce the cost in identifying and negotiating the agreement of relevant families. We would also suggest that clarity for children about their rights, if they are the subject of a special guardian arrangement, is important. We feel that such arrangements may struggle to achieve the necessary priority amidst the competing demands made on Statutory services and that such children could be vulnerable if they are not clearly aware of ways in which they can make their views known to those who continue to have responsibility for their wellbeing.

CLAUSE 115: ADOPTION AND CHILDREN ACT REGISTER

Broadly speaking, we welcome introduction of the Register. Although as an Agency whose services focus very specifically on the needs of children awaiting adoption who are currently in Public Care, we feel it will have only a minimal impact on the families we approve for adoption, as it is exceptional for anyone to wait for a placement if they have applied to adopt through the Catholic Children's Society, Nottingham, and we feel this applies to most Voluntary Adoption Agencies. Nevertheless, we feel it has an important role, not only in the linking of children and families, but also as a mechanism for accessing data about the patterns, time-scales and trends in adoption placements. In common with other Voluntary Adoption Agencies, this Agency has a wealth of experience in placing children at a distance from their Care Authority and we would suggest that a major training initiative be considered for those organisations and individuals who will be working in these ways as a result of the Register, but whose experience may not lead them to be aware of the subtleties and complexities, not just in the immediate, but in the medium and longer term of moving children at a distance from their originating Authority. These longer term implications include the effective design and delivery of contact arrangement for children and their families post-placement and post-adoption. The provision of both a multi-disciplinary and a multi-Agency nature, and particularly in the longer-term, ie, reaching eighteen, the implications for access to records and the need for adopted adults to be aware of Agencies where their histories, in terms of their birth records, are held, and also their rights to access those records.

SIBLING PLACEMENTS

Our adoption legislation has always come ``out of the stable'' of singleton placements and that is no longer the reality for a large proportion of children adopted from Public Care. Legislation needs to acknowledge its suitability, both when children are placed as individuals, but also as a group and may wish to consider the particular issues of different siblings reaching different ages, therefore having different legal rights or access to background information, which would, nevertheless, impact on all siblings. 
 The legislation should also acknowledge different views and wishes and abilities of siblings in relation to their overall comprehension and understanding of their background and life experiences and their future expectations in relation to their adoption placement.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF VOLUNTARY ADOPTION AGENCIES

It is important that the significant contribution of Voluntary Adoption Agencies to the adoption services as a whole are recognised. Between them, twenty-seven of the Member Agencies of the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies contributed over f3.5 million of voluntary income to adoption services in the year 1999-2000. 506 families were approved to adopt during the year, with 35 per cent of those families approved for sibling groups. 650 children were placed for adoption—a 29 per cent increase from the previous year. 44 per cent of those children were placed with their siblings and 21 per cent were disabled, developmentally delayed, or had special health care needs. 
 In the same year, 472 Adoption Orders were granted, compared to 434 in the previous year. Member Agencies were actively working with 1620 post-adoption cases at the end of the year, with 702 adoption placements being actively supported on a regular basis.

Examination of Witnesses

Naomi Angell, Network for Intercountry Adoption; Jacky Gordon, Head of Family Placement Services, Norwood Ravenswood; Vivienne Reed, Operations Manager for the Register, Norwood Ravenswood; Margaret Dight and Marion Hundleby, Catholic Children's Society, Nottingham; and Jim Richards, Director of the Catholic Children's Society, Diocese of Westminster, called in and examined.

David Hinchliffe: Good morning, colleagues. I welcome everyone to the sitting. I welcome, in particular, the witnesses and wish to thank them for their co-operation and willingness to come here today. I ask them to introduce themselves briefly to the Committee.

Marion Hundleby (Catholic Children's Society, Nottingham): I am currently the post-adoption specialist at the Catholic Children's Society, Nottingham. I have a background in research consultancy and social work practice.

Margaret Dight (Catholic Children's Society, Nottingham): I am the director of the Catholic Children's Society, Nottingham, the same agency at which Marion Hundleby is employed. I have been with the agency for 20 years, pioneering in inter-agency placement for children from the public care system. A decade ago, I developed the first post-adoption specialist service remit within a small voluntary adoption agency.

Jim Richards (Director of the Catholic Children's Society, Diocese of Westminster): We are a separate agency from Nottingham. We are a broad-based child care agency. One of our specialisms is adoption.

Jacky Gordon (Norwood Ravenswood): I manage the adoption service for Norwood Ravenswood. We are involved in both domestic and inter-country adoption.

Naomi Angell (Network for Inter County Adoption): I am a solicitor, specialising in domestic and inter-country adoption. I am a member of NICA—the Network for Inter Country Adoption—and the inter-country adoption lawyers group. I am also legal adviser to the Norwood adoption panel and an inter-country adopter.

Vivienne Reed (Operations Manager for the Register, Norwood Ravenswood): I have just become the operations manager for the adoption register, administered by Norwood Ravenswood. I have a background in child care social work. Before that, I managed the guardian ad litem service for Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.

David Hinchliffe: The sitting is time limited, which causes us difficulties. I hope that my colleagues will be brief when asking questions and that witnesses will also be brief and to the point in their answers. I ask everyone to speak up as people are not easy to hear in this large room.

Tim Loughton: I wish to ask the representatives of the two branches of the Catholic Children's Society and Norwood Ravenswood about adoption support services. The provision of support services is an important part of the Bill, and one of its clauses deals with assessment. We have expressed our interest in whether the assessments are necessary. Surely support services are far more essential at an early stage. Will the witnesses give brief descriptions of the support services in which they are involved and explain their relationships with local authorities?

Jim Richards: There are several issues. As the Bill stands, there is a duty to assess, but we are concerned about what might flow from that. It is not clear whether the needs that are assessed will necessarily be delivered. We face another problem, particularly as voluntary organisations. We will support adoptions, but we are involved in situations when a child will be in local authority A, but placed in local authority B. We receive services in local authority A, but have to work very hard and, sometimes unsuccessfully, to transfer those services. There is not only the issue of support services from social services, but of health and education. The Bill is unclear about that.

Tim Loughton: What are your solutions? What would you do about trans-border services and inter-agency working?

Jim Richards: We would like a much clearer duty to be placed on local authorities to provide those support services alongside assessing the need.

Jacky Gordon: One of our difficulties in inter-country adoption is the monitoring and review role. At present, local authorities have a welfare supervision role in inter-country adoption. We would like the regulations to reflect an expectation on local authorities to allow us to do that work and to fund it as well, because we have difficulty with supervising if we do not have any funding. Under the current regulations, it is not possible for us to charge applicants for that supervisory role.

Tim Loughton: Can you elaborate a little on working with local authorities? The Catholic Children's Society stresses the importance of voluntary agencies in the whole process. If anything, that needs to be talked up in the Bill. You have cited your adoption and quality option research. How will that develop under the new legislation? I am particularly keen to get to the bottom of the issue. There is a lot about assessment and the right to assessment. If adopters cry for help, they usually need help. There are few cases when it is not required. You now have a right to an assessment process. You will be told that you can have an assessment in a few weeks' time. The assessment will take place and at the end of it you might receive a recommendation, but there is no guarantee that the support services are coming through. Will not all the work of those in social services, in which there are many vacancies, be concentrated on carrying out the assessment rather than supplying the services that are so desperately need? Will that work?

Margaret Dight: There are two main issues here; you are quite right. Any child being placed for adoption now in this climate will definitely need post-adoption support; there is no question about that. The assessment of need should be taken as right. What we are saying is that local authorities should ensure that their post-adoption assessment support services are developed and informed through close collaboration with the voluntary adoption agencies, which have spearheaded a great deal of the post-adoption support work over the past 20 years in this country.
 It is essential that those services are provided in tandem. It is equally essential that local authorities have a clear budgetary mandate for post-adoption support services. One of the issues that we have found extremely difficult in our 20 years of providing adoption and post-adoption services for children adopted out of the public care system is that there can be a recognition of need and potential need at the time of placement, but there is a blurring of the issue of funding through the local authority. 
 The voluntary agency carries out an efficient and effective brokerage service, making a clear assessment of need. That assessment of need is often on a multi-disciplinary, multi-agency level, involving health, education, legal support and advice for adoptive parents. That will break down if the necessary ring-fenced funding is not made available through the local authority. I would ask my colleague Marion Hundelby, who has done significant research on this, to respond also.

Marion Hundleby: I endorse the fact that assessment is not just about what the children and families need, but about what services are out there that can be brought to bear on a situation. As Margaret Dight mentioned, this can be an interdisciplinary response. In many ways, having that point of gate-keeping at the beginning and understanding what is needed hopefully directs people most quickly to the appropriate services. That may not necessarily be social services; it may be support groups that volunteers run, for instance, or it may be initiatives that come from corporate parenting in which local authorities have included adopted children.
 While I take your point about the resource issues, we are also looking at the right routes to support families that have these very, very damaged children. I think that we have to keep coming back to the point that an adoption order is not a magic wand; it does not make things better, in the sense that these children continue to be extremely vulnerable, and if we do not get the services right and the assessment right, and they come out of adoptive homes because they return to the care system at whatever stage, it means that their problems are only compounded. 
 Assessment is important, and as a former researcher, I would also say that assessment is important in terms of ensuring standardisation of service, and—if we are looking at what is delivered to people—ensuring that if people wish to make representational complaint, there is a standard against which they can do that.

Elfyn Llwyd: I am interested in what Mr. Richards said earlier. He said that even after needs assessments, some needs will not be met. Those are large questions in a fairly substantial subject. In a few words, could you elaborate on that, please?

Jim Richards: In the voluntary sector, we are conscious of the issue of resources in local authorities. We are not merely saying, ``Come on, local authorities, cough up.'' I have worked in local authorities and have been an elected member in a local authority, so I know what the resource issues are, but if you are spending enormous resources on recruiting adopters and then placing severely damaged children with those adopters, the local authorities need to realise that resources have to stay with that child. Just as resources were being expended on that child while that child was in care, so resources need to be carried through when that child is placed.

Naomi Angell: From the family's point of view, there is concern about the delay that will be engendered if, first of all, there has to be an assessment. After that, they will have to wait for a decision to be made as to whether there will be a supply of services. It may be too late by then; the family are actually stating their need at the time that they ask for the assessment. If they then have to wait for a considerable time for discretion to be exercised as to whether there will be supply, it just could be too late.

Elfyn Llwyd: What will be the effect of the extension of local authorities' duties to carry out assessments? What difference will that make in practice? Is it simply a matter of resources?

Margaret Dight: It is a resource issue, certainly, but it is also dependent upon an accurate assessment of need. That assessment has to be made by individuals who are fully informed on issues around the adoption process, the implications of a child's background and life experiences and how that will impact on the child in placement and the on-going needs of the family. So, it is an assessment that can be made in the here and now with information that is based on the child's past and current needs, but also has to have a dynamic that recognises the level of support that may be needed for some considerable time ahead. So, we are looking at detailed, skilled, professional assessments, which need to be done rapidly and take cognisance of the skills and knowledge in different disciplines and different organisations. Again, I place emphasis on the need for effective collaboration between local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies in this issue.

Jim Richards: We must not have prolonged, protracted assessments that take up an awful lot of time. The best assessors of needs will be the adopters, and we must listen to them very carefully and quickly and get the resources in. I can see the prospect of a huge assessment industry being set up, which diverts resources from the actual helping of the adopters.

Liz Blackman: You mentioned that, currently, the role of voluntary organisations is often to broker the resources that are available from local authorities, and that the situation becomes more difficult if a child is on the books of one local authority but placed with another. However, you must also be aware, in your line of work, that some local authorities have better practice than others. I am interested in the differences that we keep seeing in the figures between the practices of local authorities. What have you learned about the best performing local authorities, in terms of providing appropriate and swift support when it is needed?

Margaret Dight: What it is based on is our experience of inter-agency places. You are quite right. We realised that the levels of practice across the country varied hugely, which led us to our research project ``Adoption—A Quality Option'', because we wanted to find out what it was that made one local authority able to offer an effective adoption service while another with a comparable budget offered a less effective one. We found that it was important that agencies had an integrated approach to adoption; that, if you like, adoption was in the hearts and minds of everyone within the organisation before it ever became part of the decision making process. For very long, adoption was seen at as a satellite service in many statutory, and some voluntary, organisations. But we found that the successful delivery of adoption services occurred where there was a very clear, integrated, committed and well resourced adoption service within that statutory environment.

Liz Blackman: Will the Bill's framework and the taskforce be helpful in achieving a more integrated approach across all authorities?

Margaret Dight: My agency very much welcome the Bill. There are aspects of the Bill that we feel extremely positive about. It raises issues that needed to be raised. It looks clearly at the on-going needs of children for adoption, as my colleague said, and it moves away from the concept of the adoption order being some magic wand that will solve all ills. We welcome that very warmly.
 My concern is, as I have entered in my submission, that there is insufficient recognition of the need for effective collaboration between the voluntary sector and the statutory authorities. That is essential. I actually included figures, which you will be aware of, to inform the panel of the numbers of children involved and the £3.5 million invested through voluntary agencies to meet effectively the needs of children in adoption and post-adoption services. That has a huge impact on informing best practice in adoption and I would feel happier if there was a tacit recognition in the Bill of the need to offer a comprehensive, fully informed, operative adoption service. It is essential that statutory agencies inform and provide their services through close collaboration with voluntary adoption agencies in their environment and beyond.

Jacky Gordon: The on-going nature of adoption support is sometimes lacking with our colleagues in local authority social service departments. We are funded for post-adoption for just one year, and it is likely that post-adoption support will be needed far beyond that. The first year may be the most straightforward for some children, and our adoptive parents would be asking for post-adoption support many years into the placement.

David Hinchliffe: According to the evidence that we have, an aspect of the Bill that has caused some anxiety relates to access to birth certificates. Mr. Richards, your evidence suggests that you have reservations about the changes that have been made. Why do you believe that those changes have been made? Presumably the Government have experienced some difficulties with the current system. Are you aware of those problems?

Jim Richards: I do not know why that change has been made in the Bill, and some of us have spent a great deal of time trying to figure out why it has been put in. Our universal practice experience in the voluntary sector is that people welcome the information-giving process. Yes, there can be tears and tribulations, but if there is an intermediary service—that is, well placed social workers acting as intermediaries between the parties—we can cope. That evidence comes not just from practice experience, but from very good research. I refer particularly to the work of Julia Feast, from the Church of England Children's Society, and of David Howe. It is well attested, and we just do not understand why this measure has been included. Why cannot adult adoptees get hold of their original birth certificate? That seems to me a fundamental right.

David Hinchliffe: Presumably in expressing that anxiety you are speaking on behalf of other agencies to which you have spoken.

Jim Richards: I know of no voluntary adoption agency that has a different view from mine.

Marion Hundleby: The workability of what is being suggested would have to be considered extremely carefully. In my extensive experience of providing counselling in these situations, the majority of children coming into adoption now are older and know a lot of this information anyway, so I question the workability of what is suggested in the Bill. Children often contact family members—other siblings, for instance—who may have different experiences of the birth family and will be sources of information. So as well as endorsing Mr. Richards' comments about the success of this section to date, in over 25 years, I question whether it is viable as it is described.

Naomi Angell: This also applies to children adopted from overseas, who are dislocated from their country and their birth families by geographic boundaries. The adoptive parents will in most cases hold the majority of the information about the birth family. They may have met the birth mother in the country of origin. However, the agency and the central authority will also hold information, and it is important that it should be an independent right of the child in a child-centred adoption service that the child should have that right of information.

Robert Walter: I have a great deal of sympathy with all the points that have been made. However, do you believe—I am playing devil's advocate—that a compromise might be reached whereby people have access to that information on condition that they do not make contact, as one agency suggested in evidence to us?

Marion Hundleby: I understand what you are suggesting. I would suggest, however, that that is just about impossible to police. As it is, an awful lot of contact takes place that bypasses adoption agencies. We are in the age of the internet, and people can find each other quickly. We need to provide user-friendly services in which people do not feel that their needs and feelings are misunderstood or blocked because of legislation that I can only describe as unhelpful, in the way that is drafted in the Bill. We need to be approachable and to support people in their quest for information. Frankly, what you are suggesting would happen anyway through other means.

Robert Walter: So you think that people would bypass and circumvent the system anyway?

Marion Hundleby: Yes. They would try to do that.

Jim Richards: I am not sure that I entirely agree with that. It is our practice experience that, when we are working with people and saying, ``Look, birth mother does not want to see you,'' because of the nature of the relationship between us and the adult adoptee, and the explanations that we give, that is respected. It is far better to get people into the office and to discuss these things, than to have people floating off on their own and using private agencies that have no base in adoption.

Marion Hundleby: My point is that bringing people into the office is the crucial factor. Once we are working with people, we can establish the relationships that help the most productive things to happen.

Jacqui Smith: That is a very interesting point. Can you envisage a situation in which it would be either inappropriate or dangerous for an adopted adult to be able directly to contact their birth parents?

Marion Hundleby: Yes.

Jacqui Smith: So what could we do to prevent that?

Jacky Gordon: I would say that what people need in those situations is counselling. Adult adoptees who have been obliged to have counselling have approached the situation in a much more prepared way, because they have been advised not just to make immediate contact, but, for instance, to use the agency in an intermediary role.

Jacqui Smith: But is it not the case that, at the moment, you would not have to use an agency, because you could access your birth certificate without going through an adoption agency?

Jacky Gordon: Yes, you could do that, at the moment.

Jacqui Smith: So, it would not be possible to institute the sort of system that you are talking about—and which you think might be the best way to deal with a very small number of cases where there might be a problem—if people could bypass the adoption agency and obtain their birth certificate in a different way?

Jacky Gordon: With some counselling help and support.

Jacqui Smith: Yes, but is it not the case that they would only get counselling if they came to an adoption agency?

Jacky Gordon: Yes, at the moment.

Jacqui Smith: So, it would be possible for them not to come to an adoption agency, and to get that information in a different way?

David Hinchliffe: Do you agree with that, Ms Gordon? We need your answer to be on the record.

Jacky Gordon: Yes.

Jim Richards: My point is, why pick on adoption? There are all sorts of difficult situations between children and their parents that can be of some danger, so why are we flagging up adoption?

Kevin Brennan: I wish to follow up that point by playing devil's advocate slightly. You are asking, why should somebody who has been adopted not have the right to contact their parent, whatever the background of their case? However, because of the nature of adoption these days, you are likely to be dealing with a higher proportion of damaged individuals—and many of them might have been damaged by their parents. Therefore, to play devil's advocate, is there any merit at all in the proposal to give further protection to birth parents, as is envisaged in the Bill?

Jacky Gordon: In our experience, it has been more beneficial for adoptees to receive the information that they have received. Only a very small number of adoptees have had difficulties, where there has been a negative outcome.

Kevin Brennan: Do you think that the proportions are likely to rise because of the nature of adoption these days, compared with when the previous legislation was introduced 25 years ago?

Jacky Gordon: I suppose that that is a possibility, but I think that the benefits of adoptees getting more information—which might even lead to a meeting with their birth parent—can be quite a healing process.

Jonathan Djanogly: I was going to make a similar point to that which was made by the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan). It is always possible to hire a private eye to find out information, and that has been done. However, we must look at the statutory format, rather than at what people could get up to, and I would be interested to hear your views about situations in which people are asked to sign pieces of paper that say that they will not make contact—even, perhaps, in limited circumstances. Even though it is not binding, when push came to shove it would give the recipient of the piece of paper something with which to go to the court and obtain a non-contract injunction of some sort, which would make that process easier. What do you think about that?

Marion Hundleby: I wonder if that is where adoption agencies should be focusing their work. The role of adoption agencies is very much to act as counsellors and intermediaries, and, if necessary, to work with parties other than the one who is presenting the issue. Our agency occasionally works with people who have serious mental health problems, when that sort of thing might apply, and we would endeavour to put in place a service for other parties and build in protection in that way, because, frankly, I am not hopeful that what you are suggesting would make a substantial difference.

Jonathan Djanogly: What if people do not want to be counselled? You are assuming that people will want to contact each other, which the statistics show is normally the case. However, what is the position when they do not want to do so?

Marion Hundleby: Obviously, yes, counselling is a voluntary arrangement, but we also do some level of risk assessment, and if we feel that another party is at risk we would endeavour to work with that other party.

Jonathan Djanogly: Do you think that that should be your decision?

Marion Hundleby: Well, our decision in the sense that we are in possession of certain information. We will be informed by our medical and legal advisers, who are part of our adoption agency work. The way in which we would approach it is to try to assess any risk to an individual that may come out of a contact. I believe that that would be a stronger way forward than signatures.

Jonathan Djanogly: But at the moment there is no statutory obligation for the adoption agency to contact both parties to see if they are happy with information being released. Do you think that there should be such an obligation?

David Hinchliffe: Margaret Dight, would you like to say something?

Margaret Dight: May I take us back from where we are at the moment, and look at the move, because it is pertinent to the question that you are raising. It needs to be seen in a global sense rather than as a tunnel issue.
 The whole area of adoption has grown in openness over the last decade. We are encouraging adopters, children and everyone who is part of and party to the adoption process, including foster carers, to develop a more open way of working. Several voluntary adoption agencies have pioneered very effective services of mediation to birth parents, particularly those whose children are being lost through the public care system. That will more than likely be through the courts, so there is an adversarial notion, and voluntary agencies can meet that need. Many councils are taking up and purchasing that service. 
 Given the layering of work that is being done, which started over a decade ago and is carrying on increasingly, with appropriate funding allowing more and more voluntary agencies to do that work more effectively we will significantly reduce the number of occasions when the extreme situation that was suggested would occur. There will not be the sense of myth, secrecy and lack of knowledge that would have existed before.

Jonathan Djanogly: No, but at the same time if the amount of adoption increases, it is likely that the number of problem cases will significantly increase.

Margaret Dight: I do not agree. Children with significant problems are being placed for adoption. Because those problems and the need for post-placement and post-adoption support services are being recognised, adoptive families are not being encouraged to walk off into the sunset after the granting of an adoption order. They now recognise the need for significant support and work throughout that child's life into young adulthood. While the problems may be more evident because we know more about them, we are, likewise, addressing them, and with the right resources and funding we are able to address them satisfactorily. So I still believe that it is less likely for those situations to which you refer to be made possible.
 As my colleague said, we have our own experience of individuals with serious mental health problems. To me, that begs the question of making adoption a much more widely held knowledge. The discipline of adoption and adoption practice needs to be taken on board by different disciplines, instead of just being seen in the arena of social services. The medical, health and legal professions need to be aware of those adoption issues.

Hilton Dawson: The process of people being adopted and tracing their birth relatives is bound to be full of emotion, anxiety and difficulties. It is obvious from the evidence given yesterday that there is no evidence for including the proposal in this part of the Bill. From your extensive experience in this respect; are you aware of a single instance in which an adopted person has committed a criminal offence against a birth parent?

Margaret Dight: We had a client with a serious mental health problem and we felt that it was our obligation to ensure that all parties with whom he made contact were aware of their vulnerability. That is the only situation that I can recall.

Hilton Dawson: You are therefore saying that structures are already in place to deal with those issues.

Robert Walter: I want to pose the question again in respect of inter-country adoptions, where there are difficulties because of the distances involved. Mr. Hinchliffe, you and I took part in an inquiry three years ago on the largest living cohort of intercountry adoptees, the child migrants to Australia, who spent many years trying to trace their roots. Should we consider providing more assistance to those who are subject to inter-country adoption to trace their birth records?

Naomi Angell: There needs to be a contact register for inter-country adoptive families. It is extremely difficult for birth families to know where to go to get information on their birth children and often they are told when they hand over their child for adoption that that is it; the story ends there for them.
 For the adopted children there are, as I said, geographical difficulties. There should be a contact register based either on the existing contact register for inter-country adoptive families, or alternatively, which might be more appropriate, in the central authority when it is established with The Hague convention, which will have all the information. Everything will go through that. It seems the easiest place for people abroad to contact and also for the children. I hope that the Bill will enable that to be established.

Andrew Love: I am a little confused. All of you seem to recognise that there are, or could be, occasions when it would not be appropriate to put the adopted person in contact with their birth family. Although that has been disputed, it was not disputed yesterday. There has been an increase in relationship difficulties in the past 25 years. What would your organisation, or other groups, suggest to deal with the small number of difficult cases? Does anyone have any views on that issue? I am still not clear about it.

Marion Hundleby: From our agency's point of view, the way we work at the moment is satisfactory. The risk of that happening is so slight that I would not wish to see changes to a piece of legislation that has been tried and tested over a quarter of a century and has been welcomed generally by all members of the adoption triangle. We are not just talking about adopted people, but their birth families too and often their adoptive parents. I would wish to see this continuing as it is. I bring you back to the point made earlier, that policing this in any way will be extremely difficult. Thinking forward, children from the care system will have had access to their records and their information and, as my colleague said, will often have been in contact with their families. A lot of resources would be spent trying to make this work and, frankly, it would end up being abandoned.

Hilton Dawson: Can you estimate the impact upon individuals who have been adopted but are prevented from having this basic information about their origins?

Margaret Dight: Absolutely devastating. I cannot emphasise that too strongly.

Naomi Angell: I offer this solution as a lawyer, that in the very few extreme cases there are civil, legal remedies of applying for injunctions in cases of harassment and so on which could provide some remedy so that you do not have to have the far-reaching new provision.

Jonathan Djanogly: I agree, but would it not be easier to get the injunction on the basis of a piece of paper if someone has broken an agreement not to make contact?

Naomi Angell: Possibly, but I think that is unnecessary. The means would not justify the ends.

Elfyn Llwyd: Would not the court have to be party to the first agreement?

Naomi Angell: If there were a risk to the individual, they could seek a civil remedy, as other people could. That could be completely separate from the adoption framework.

David Hinchliffe: Let us move on to a slightly different issue.

Henry Bellingham: The evidence from the Catholic Children's Society says that before a placement, adopters need to have information about the child that will be placed with them to help them to plan and decide. Likewise, the Adoption Forum says that one of the root causes of disruption in a placement is a lack of information about the child's history. Do you feel that adoptive families should have access to information about their child's history?
 Margaret Dight: I do. I feel very strongly about this. Over the years, I have seen confused children, who have had very difficult life experiences, placed with adoptive parents who have little or no active knowledge about those children's backgrounds, life experiences and, most important, the impact of those experiences on the children. Providing information after the granting of an adoption order is absolutely and fundamentally unacceptable. Let me make an analogy. None of us would enter into a permanent relationship with a total stranger. We certainly would not marry someone to whom we had been introduced that morning. That would be very unusual—[Interruption.] I take that back; perhaps some of us would.

David Hinchliffe: There are some odd people in this place.[Laughter.]

Margaret Dight: Absolutely.
 Children are no different when it comes to knowledge. Given the difficulties that have been experienced by the children whom we place for adoption, it is vital that they know, if they are of an age, that their new parents know about them, warts and all. Many young children who have suffered severe abuse still carry the stigma that they were to blame. For some children, it is incredibly freeing to know that their new parents know everything that has happened to them, including their darkest and innermost secrets, and they are still loved and welcomed. 
 From a parental point of view, if people are not given full information about a child, how can they possibly parent them? Their hands are tied behind their backs. For many children who have suffered horrendous abuse, memories can be triggered in all sorts of situations. For instance, many such children have been abused around bathtime, but adoptive parents do not know that. They prepare a bath early in the placement. One does not need much of an imagination to appreciate the fear and terror that may be created in a child by that simple family activity. 
 Let us consider the agency perspective. Agencies are extremely vulnerable if they have not been in a position to acquire accurate and full information, make an assessment on that information and pass it to the family with whom they are working. Agencies are very vulnerable—there have been test cases—when families subsequently learn of life experiences, particularly sexual abuse, that may have made the child whom they are parenting vulnerable and also, sometimes, abusers of the parents' birth children or other adopted children. 
 A gamut of information firmly indicates that it is essential for adoptive parents to have full, accurate and factual information, and an assessment based on it as to the impact on the child in placement before the match is made at an adoption panel and before the parents indicate a willingness to go ahead with the adoption.

Jacqui Smith: Are you arguing that the Bill should go further than it does?

Margaret Dight: Absolutely. The Adoption Agencies Regulations 1983 stated that information should be provided to every family adopting a child as soon as possible after that child's placement. Those regulations went some way, but did not go far enough, because it is essential that information be provided to families before they make a decision about parenting a child.
 What often happens in agencies at the moment, as you may be aware, is that there are professional forms called form E and form F. Form E is a descriptive professional narrative of a child's care career that is presented to an adoption panel. It is often—I believe, erroneously—passed on to adoptive parents as the background information. It is inadequate. It is a chronology of circumstance. It bears no real and true assessment of the impact of that child's life experiences and how they will affect that child in family placement. I would certainly like to see the Bill making it quite clear that it is an expectation that before making any agreement to pursue the link with the child, adoptive parents have access to clear, full and evidenced information from the placing agency.

Julian Brazier: You put the point so well. We raised this yesterday and, in the interests of time, I will not pursue it further, except to say that we need to change this point. Having this opportunity makes the whole Special Standing Committee process worth while.

Liz Blackman: The Minister asked the exact question that I was going to ask. I became involved with the Bill on Second Reading because of the experience of a couple in my constituency who came up against inaccurate and very thin information, which led to a dreadful experience. They felt themselves to be a failure for asking for the information. There are implications in terms of good and up-to-date record-keeping in this process.

David Hinchliffe: Can we move on to inter-country adoptions?

Meg Munn: May I ask Naomi Angell to tell us about her organisation and what it does?

Naomi Angell: NICA, which started as the British Association of Inter-Country Adoptions, started in 1990 as a multidisciplinary forum, bringing together a unique group of diverse interest groups in inter-country adoption, including social workers from local authorities and voluntary agencies, guardians ad litem, representatives of the legal and medical profession, parents groups and organisations involved in international social services who deal regularly with inquiries from local authorities and individuals trying to obtain information from abroad. The objective is to discuss the issues and to try to promote better practice in inter-country adoption. We meet regularly and have responded to the whole range of policy initiatives.

Meg Munn: You obviously will be aware of the interest provoked by one case in the media. Does your organisation support the provisions in the Bill that make it an offence to bring into the UK a child adopted abroad in the previous six months if the prescribed conditions have not been met?

Naomi Angell: We broadly welcome the provisions that would tackle that issue. We do not totally understand the six-month time limit. As I understand it from the Second Reading debate, it is hoped that this figure will not catch people living abroad but will catch those who are abroad just to adopt. My feeling is that it is the correct figure. I know that most of the states in Australia have similar provisions. There is an additional one. If it is felt that the period is too short, it could be combined with a provision that would catch people who were staying abroad purely to get round the provisions of the Bill.

Meg Munn: You are saying that there is an additional clause.

Naomi Angell: There certainly is in the state of Australia where I have had some recent contact. There is a period of time, plus an additional provision. If the people are staying abroad specifically to get round the provisions, they could be caught.

Meg Munn: It would be an additional improvement.

Naomi Angell: Yes, but I think that six months is the right time period.

Meg Munn: Does your organisation support the proposals to clarify the criteria by which countries will be included on a designated list of countries where adoption goes through proper processes?

Naomi Angell: We certainly welcome the reform of the designated list, which has needed attention for a very long time. We do not know the criteria that will be used to determine whether a country will be on the designated list. We have seen the draft regulations and guidance that were published last week by the Department of Health, but that is only draft, and I understand that it is not definite at this stage. I think we need more information about the framework. We certainly feel that it needs to be looked at.

Meg Munn: On the relationship between voluntary agencies and local authorities when people's home studies are done and approved, and the subsequent monitoring when a child first comes into the country, what does your organisation feel about the current arrangements? Should they change?

Naomi Angell: With regard to pre-adoption procedures, we are concerned that it is difficult to get a home study at the moment. There are considerable time delays, and we are concerned that the duty to provide an inter-country adoption service should be a real duty that is fulfilled. At the moment, the voluntary adoption agencies have quite long waiting lists, and local authorities are saying the same. Local authorities are tackling that problem by setting up consortiums. There is one in west London and one in north London, and one hopes that those will tackle some of the issues. However, I think that there are real problems at the moment in terms of obtaining a home study and juggling that against the increased duties on local authorities with regard to domestic adoption assessment and the time limits under the standards. That needs to be looked at.
 In terms of the position afterwards, the regulations will enable voluntary agencies to be able to charge for post-placement reports. That will certainly be necessary; Jacky Gordon raised earlier the point that the voluntary agencies will be in difficulty in terms of resources if they cannot obtain finance for post-placement duties.

Meg Munn: Are there any other issues about inter-country adoption that you do not feel have been tackled by the proposals?

Naomi Angell: There is the issue in clause 12 of the proposed review of decisions made by the agency decision-maker. We feel that there also needs to be a review process of central authority decision-making. As it stands, the home study report goes to the Department of Health after decisions made by the agency decision-maker, which then has a decision-making role in relation to that. The criteria that they use to make that decision are not clear, and there is no review process other than judicial review, which is expensive, time-consuming and inaccessible. We feel that there needs to be transparency and accountability.

Meg Munn: To bring that into line.

Naomi Angell: To bring that into line. Another issue is the registration of overseas adoptions. It will be possible, under schedule 1, to register overseas adoptions—designated country adoptions—on the adopted children's register. That will enable people to get the equivalent of a birth certificate; a document that a child can produce throughout their adult life whenever they are asked for a birth certificate. At the moment, it is not possible for those adoptions to be registered. It will be fine for children adopted after the Act, but it should have a retrospective effect. For example, in a family that has two adopted children from China, one of whom was adopted before the Act and the other after it, those two children will have two different records. It is very difficult to have to produce a record or a birth certificate, or whatever one is asked for officially, that states that an individual is abandoned or parentless, or that is just based on the Chinese information. That can be very difficult for the child.
 There is also the general issue about the facilitation of inter-country adoption. There are certainly welcome provisions that introduce controls against cases such as the Kilshaw case. Facilitation, encouragement and help should be given to people so that they can adopt properly. At the moment, it is very difficult for families to do that. They may be able to obtain a home study report from a voluntary agency or a local authority, but after that they are on their own. They have to make contact with the foreign country, seek information on that country, and meet all the legal procedures in their country and in the child's country. They must ensure that the child is eligible for adoption. Many of the best-organised countries will not deal with British families, because they prefer to deal with linking agencies rather than individuals who are learning the system for the first time. There are no linking or full-service agencies in this country. British families use American full-service agencies, adding another complex component to an already complex situation. 
 British families need to be put on a level playing field. We need funding to start up linking, mediation and full-service inter-country adoption agencies to ensure fairness for British families. At the moment, the Adoption (Intercountry Aspects) Act 1999 allows a country to register an inter-country adoption agency only if it is also registered as a domestic adoption agency. That gives quite a difficult set of procedures for them to achieve, particularly if they are attempting to set up a smaller operation, although we totally accept that it has to be properly regulated.

David Hinchliffe: We have two other areas to cover before we conclude, but there is another question from Mr. Bellingham.

Henry Bellingham: May I go back to the pre-adoption situation? You mentioned home studies. I have been briefed in detail by the director of social services in Norfolk, whose department experiences a great deal of pressure on resources, manning and so on. Taking over home studies in the country of adoption would be an additional strain. On the one hand, there is that situation; on the other hand, there are independent, experienced social workers, who have been doing private home studies. How do you harness that resource? Do you do it through a voluntary agency, through a consortium, or do the social workers work for local authorities? Are they licensed by local authorities? Would you comment on that?

Naomi Angell: My experience is that local authorities and voluntary agencies use self-employed social workers to do the work. They do it for the agency and, as the agencies are able to charge fees for the reports, it should not result in a financial loss to the agency. That gives flexibility in providing services to the agency.

Jonathan Djanogly: Do you agree with the British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering regarding placement orders? It has said that if the parents do not consent, the Bill should use the words
``adoption would be so significantly better for the child than any other option as to justify overriding the parents' wishes.'' 
Will the Bill make it too easy for placement orders to be made against parents' wishes?

Jim Richards: I agree that there must be a higher threshold than just the welfare of the child. It has been argued that if you go through the steps in clause 1 of the Bill, it will ensure that the various thresholds will have been jumped over. However, I would still point to that and urge the need to look at a phrase such as ``is significantly better.''

Hilton Dawson: During any court appearance surrounding placement orders, should children of sufficient age and understanding have the ability to refuse consent to adoption?

Jim Richards: The Bill says that the wishes and feelings of the child, given the age and understanding of the child, should be taken into consideration. That is sufficient, as long as it is clearly recorded in any reports going to the court, and as long as the child is properly represented, which means having a good children's guardian service and legal representation. It is too much to expect a child to take on the burden of making the decision, ``Yes, I want to be adopted'' or ``No, I do not''. We are talking about children and there needs to be a legitimate amount of paternalism and maternalism in looking after a child. We should take the child's views and record them, but take into account age and understanding.

Julian Brazier: I congratulate Norwood Ravenswood on gaining the contract to run the national register. It is good news that an experienced voluntary adoption agency has won that contract. Is the organisation satisfied that the Bill has a sufficient element of compulsion to ensure that it creates a true national register? Some local authorities—I do not want to pick out individual ones—have a poor adoption record.

Vivienne Reed: There have been meetings with local authorities throughout the country in the last two months. The feedback that we received is that all local authorities and agencies feel able to comply with the register. There is no evidence to say that any local authorities will not comply.

Julian Brazier: Are you satisfied that authorities will give you all the names that they should, and that children will not be lost in the system? Parents who have passed may not be pushed forward. Often, agencies have a financial interest in keeping parents to themselves in order to take an expensive child off their hands.

Vivienne Reed: The feedback that we have had is that some local authorities may feel that it is yet another burden on them to have to do that, but I have no feedback to say that they will not do it. They have embraced the concept of the register.

Julian Brazier: Thank you. I move on to another subject that all three groups may want to comment on. Yesterday, we had a long session with the Local Government Association and Department of Health officials to discuss the regulation of small self-help groups, which several of us are concerned about. Do you have any views on that? Margaret Dight mentioned the idea of sending people for counselling to a self-help group run by doctors. The Bill will regulate all but a small group of people who are active in the adoption field. Can we exempt from legislation groups that are wholly or mainly run by doctors?

Margaret Dight: There are two slightly separate issues here that overlap. Anyone who provides a professional service in the adoption arena and is seen by prospective recipients of those services as being a professional body should definitely be the subject of regulation. I have no hesitation in saying that whatsoever. There are a number of support groups that are often established and through agencies—buddy networks, friendship groups—that are less formal, and give support when individuals require it. There is less need to make that sort of organisation subject to regulation. That is a very heavy-handed method of regulating something that, in a sense, cannot be regulated because it is about meeting the needs of particular individuals at the particular time that they approach a particular group. For professional services, yes, absolutely; for non-professional, friendship services, no. That is too heavy.

Julian Brazier: That is clear. My final question is for Mr. Richards. You expressed some strong views in your memorandum on the possibility of extending adoption to unmarried couples. Do you want to say something about that?

Jim Richards: I support the Bill as it stands, in that only married couples or single people should be able to apply for an adoption order. Obviously, I have read the Second Reading debate and I am aware of the discussion around this issue. My feeling is that there is a qualitatively different nature to cohabitation and marriage. That is borne out by figures of higher breakdown of cohabitation as opposed to marriage. The other thing, of course, is the nature of marriage and the need for the state to uphold marriage because we see it as a demonstrable good, and that needs to go forward.
 If you turn it round and say that cohabiting couples are going to be allowed to adopt, there will be a whole range of issues that those assessing the cohabiting couple will have to take on board. We have to look on the grim side, if you like. What happens if one of the cohabiting couple dies, or if they split up? There are issues of pensions, legacies, the house, and whether there is a cohabitation contract. I would certainly argue, if we are going to go down that road, that the assessing social workers will have to have a level of intrusion into the financial and other background of the family and obtain the necessary documentary evidence, such that couples may even say that it is easier to get married.

David Hinchliffe: I put it to you, Mr. Richards, that there could be a situation in which the child welfare principle, which Parliament has long accepted, is best served by the adoption of that child by an unmarried couple. Is that not a factor?

Jim Richards: Of course, it is a factor.

David Hinchliffe: You would accept that that could happen, which presumably contradicts your view.

Jim Richards: What we are expecting of adopters is a lifelong, public commitment to that child. Why not therefore expect of adopters themselves a lifelong public commitment to each other, which is marriage? That is the point I am making.

David Hinchliffe: This is quite a contentious area and we have only a few minutes left. I appeal to my colleagues and the witnesses to be brief.

Jonathan R Shaw: To paraphrase what you said regarding placement orders, is putting marriage at a higher threshold than the child's interest the right thing to do? From what we heard yesterday, it is important to compare like with like. Your figures on the differing levels of break ups between cohabiting and married couples are one thing, but we should look at those who are being assessed for adoption, which is a different situation.
 You could be assessing a married couple who might have split up or divorced half a dozen times, and a couple who have been cohabiting for 10, 11, 12 or 13 years. We have heard a lot about quality assessment this morning; the assessment must be based on stability of the relationship. Those, rather than a piece of paper, are the issues for a social worker. Do you not agree?

Jim Richards: Marriage is not a piece of paper; there is a distinct difference. We might possibly look at a married couple coming forward who have had six previous marriages, but I am not sure that we would. In framing legislation, we are sending out a signal. The signal that we are sending out with the Bill as it is, is that we as a country value marriage and see it as important. If we turn it round—as perhaps you are suggesting, I am not sure—and allow cohabiting couples to adopt, we are then saying that marriage, as it were, does not matter. We undermine marriage, and by undermining marriage we then make it more likely that many more children will be in rocky situations. What we have to realise is that cohabitation is far less stable than marriage.

David Hinchliffe: We could debate this all day, as you will appreciate.

Meg Munn: I shall be brief and give an example. A child is placed with foster parents who are not married. That placement becomes stable, and adoption is deemed to be in the long-term interest of the child. The adoption is by both parents in order to ensure a legal relationship to both parents. Under current practice, one parent would adopt the child and the other would seek parental responsibility. At the moment, people effectively go round the law to achieve the desired outcome for the child. Would it not be more honest to allow people a proper legal route?

Marion Hundleby: Our views are somewhat at variance with Mr. Richards on this. We have been considering the child's best interests first and taking into account the many and varied patterns that do not, of themselves, preclude people from adopting. We try to look at it holistically and put the child's interest first.

David Hinchliffe: It is interesting to hear the differences.

Margaret Dight: May I briefly provide some information for the panel? Several Catholic children's societies in the country are completely autonomous. They have their own ethos and work according to the same policy and procedures suggested by their own philosophy. I support my colleague's comments in so far as the Catholic Children's Society in Nottingham currently has a policy of working with married applications, but that is currently under review in order to establish that we are promoting the best interests of children, rather than protecting and promoting the institution of marriage.

David Hinchliffe: That is helpful. Hilton, do you wish to intervene?

Hilton Dawson: No, I am happy. I rest my case.

Naomi Angell: One small point is that looking at the matter from the point of view of the child's interest happens at the moment, and frequently. If one is looking for permanence, the child's relationship with one of those parents will last for ever, whereas the relationship with the other resident parent will end at 18. It seems that it is the children's right to have equality of legal status with both people who are bringing them up.

David Hinchliffe: Are there are further points from my colleagues? If not, I thank the witnesses for a most helpful session. We are grateful to you all. Thank you very much.
 The witnesses withdrew.

Memorandum from Professor John Triseliotis - INTRODUCTION

I am writing as someone who has been looking forward to a new Adoption Act for a number of years now. As a result I welcome many of the recommendations featuring in the Bill which is now before the Committee. However, I have been both surprised and dismayed at clauses 53-62 and 76 which essentially will deprive eventually adopted people of the existing right to have access to their birth records and other relevant information. Not only these clauses have appeared out of the blue without prior consultation but their basis is unknown to me and to many other people I talked to. 
 I have an interest in the matter because I carried out on behalf of the Houghton Committee the original study which led to the opening of the records in England and Wales. Scotland provided for this since 1930. Before I give provisional findings from a current study relevant to the debate, it would be helpful, to summarise how Section 51 Adoption Act 1976, (previously Section 26 Children Act 1975), has come about.

SECTION 26 OF THE CHILDREN ACT 1975

Because of many representations made by Adoption Agencies and adopted people, one of the tasks the Houghton Committee set up for itself was to find out more about the subject of access to birth records and whether adopted people in England and Wales should have a right of access similar to that in Scotland. To this effect the Committee commissioned me to carry out research to evaluate the use made in Scotland of access to birth records. 
 The study In Search of Origins (Routledge, 1973) was made available to the Committee and among other things not only it highlighted the negative impact on adopted people of secrecy, but also made direct links between the impact of secrecy on the adopted person 's identity, feelings of self worth and overall mental health. Many of those searching had not been told about their adoption by their parents but found out accidentally or from outside sources. Sometimes disclosure had been delayed till adult life which was experienced as most traumatic in some cases leading to an identity crisis for the adopted person. Even where the adopters disclosed the adoption early-on, they had not been given background information to pass on to the child or the information was either not collected by Adoption Agencies or locked up in files. Unlike adopted people in Scotland who could pursue a search, adopted people in England would speak of their ``frustration'', ``anger'' and ``sense of desolation'' at being denied fundamental information crucial to their well-being. 
 The study In Search of Origins reported also how important it was to many adopted people to meet with members of their birth family to establish more directly their roots and genealogy and find out why their parent(s)parted with them and more indirectly learn whether they were wanted and loved before being 'given' up. Besides the publication of the study members of the Houghton Committee were also shown a video film based on the research which appeared to be equally influential in changing members' attitudes in favour of greater openness. The final Houghton report which was published in 1972 commented that the kind of information sought by adopted people 
``helps the proper development of a sense of identity'' 
and urged that 
``adopters be provided with relevant background information'' 
 (para 28, p. 8). 
Later on, the report added: 
 ``The weight of the evidence as a whole was in favour of free access to background information, and this accords with our wish to encourage greater openness about adoption. We take the view that on reaching the age of majority an adopted person should not be denied access to his original birth records.'' 
 (para 303, p. 85). 
In the ensuing years Section 26 was to be replicated in many other countries around the World. 
 The requirement for counselling which was inserted in the Children Act 1975 was meant to calm the anxieties of sections of the press and of some MPs who viewed access as the equivalent to opening a Pandora's box. They were suggesting that this step would lead to ``vindictiveness'' and ``blackmail'' on the part of adopted people towards birth parents. Neither my original study, nor subsequent ones, found evidence of ``vindictiveness'' or of the use of ``blackmail'' in this or other countries. (Haimes and Timms, 1985; Howe and Feast, 2000). Had there been evidence of abuse of the facility over this period the press would have been quick to spot it. Instead, both the press and the TV channels with their documentaries and fictional plays have been highlighting the pleasure, joy and happiness that access to records could bring to adopted people and birth family members alike. 
 I am not saying that cases of vindictiveness may not surface. However, this is not a valid argument for depriving the vast majority of adopted people of a facility which has brought so much comfort, pleasure, and contentment to some 400,000 of them so far.

PROVISIONAL FINDINGS FROM OUR CURRENT STUDY

Studies across many countries and continents were also to show that parting with a child for adoption involves feelings of loss, grief, anger and guilt which for many birth parents cannot be wished away. The stressful nature of the event often gives rise also to physical and mental illness. Many of these birth mothers came to feel responsible for giving away their child, even if at the time they had almost no other choice. As a result they saw themselves as ``unworthy'' and had a very low opinion of themselves and a poor self-image. For some their sense of loss, far from diminishing with time, seemed to intensify and was particularly high at certain of the child 's milestones such as birthdays or starting school. (See Winkler & Keppel 1984; Bouchier, Lambert and Triseliotis 1991; Howe, Sawbridge and Hinings, 1992; and Hughes and Logan 1993; Wells, 1993). A summary of various studies on the subject concluded that: 
``birth parents experience profound and protracted grief reactions, depression and an enduring pre-occupation with a worry about the welfare of the child''. 
 (Brodzinsky, 1990 p. 304). 
Many of the mothers interviewed by the above studies wanted to establish contact with their sons or daughters from whom they had parted many years ago and viewed this as the only sway forward that would bring them some peace.

RELEVANT CURRENT RESEARCH EVIDENCE

No research known to me has studied the perspectives and reactions of birth mothers who had been sought by their sons or daughters or who had themselves sought their sons or daughters. We are currently carrying out such a study with my research colleagues Feast, J. and Kyle, F at the Children's Society. Our research is much wider than the issues debated here, but because of the urgency of the matter we outline below some provisional findings from answers to relevant questions. For obvious reasons we concentrate here on mothers who were sought out. Birth Mothers Who Were Sought Out by Their Sons or Daughters An analysis of the first 50 or so of those birth mothers who were sought out shows the following: 
 Table 1: Were you aware that the law changed in 1975 giving adopted people the right for information from their birth records? 
Frequency— per cent 
 Yes aware—62 
 No—31 
 Not sure—6 
 Total—99 
Table 2: If you were aware how did you feel about this? 
Frequency— per cent 
 Pleased—50 
 Worried—20 
 Not sure—23 
 Angry—3 
 Indifferent—3 
 Total—99 
Table 3: What was your initial reaction when you heard that your birth son/daughter wanted to have contact with you? 
Frequency— per cent 
 Pleased—50 
 excited, happy—55 
 surprised—20 
 nervous, worried—13 
 frightened— 2 
 uncertain—2 
 other—6 
 Total—98 
Table 4: Do you feel the contact experience has been a positive one for you? 
Frequency— per cent 
 Very positive—67 
 Positive—27 
 Not sure—6 
 Total—100 
Acknowledgements to Julia Feat and Fiona Kyle for the following information. 
 Table 5: Looking back, how pleased are you that your son/daughter sought you out? 
Frequency— per cent 
 Very pleased—80 
 Pleased—14 
 mixed—6 
 Total—100

DISCUSSION

What the above analysis tells us is that 94 per cent of the birth mothers who were sought by their sons or daughters had a very positive or positive experience and a similar proportion were very pleased or pleased that their son or daughter sought them out. A reminder that in the study (Howe, D. and Feast, J., Adoption, Search and Reunion, London: Children 's Society, 2000), 72 per cent of adopted people sought by their birth relatives were positive about the contact and its aftermath. The rest had found it ``emotionally upsetting and negative'' (p. 142). Birth mothers who were sought in this study have been infinitely more positive than adopted people. Even amongst many of those birth mothers who initially expressed some concerns, such as worry or anxiety (see Table 2 above), they were now pleased for having being sought. Some comments indicating their earlier anxieties included: 
—``Concerned about my husband's reaction—that was the thing that concerned me most.'' 
 —``Nervous in case I found out something bad had happened to him i.e. died or seriously ill.'' 
 —``My biggest fear was he wouldn't like me and would not want a second meeting.'' 
We have an abundance of quotes from the 94 per cent of birth mothers who expressed satisfaction and pleasure at being sought and the following are only a tiny sample: 
 Initial stage: 
—``I was absolutely over the moon when I learned that she wanted to make contact with me. I 'd been hoping she would, right from when she was young.'' 
 —``surprised, shocked and delighted.'' 
 —``I had waited 30 years for this moment, fearing I would die before ever seeing her again.'' 
After contact: 
—``A feeling of overwhelming happiness at finding each other.'' 
 —``I am no longer sad and worried about his well-being.'' 
 —``Mainly as reassurance that she did have a happy childhood and that I made the right decision.'' 
 —``It eased the feelings of loss and in our case to find she had a happy home life.'' 
In final conclusion to all accounts Section 51 of the Adoption Act 1976 has been shown to have worked very well indeed. There have been no reports that the facility has been abused. Apart from having proved so invaluable to adopted people in terms of their genealogy and identity, on the basis of our provisional findings outlined earlier, it appears also to have had an even more positive impact on almost all the birth mothers who were sought by their sons or daughters. Contact greatly helped to alleviate their anxieties about the child 's well-being, lessened the element of loss and guilt associated with the parting decision and brought about piece of mind and improved mental health to many. 
 It is unlikely that a 100 per cent agreement can be reached in human relationships. The 94 per cent found in our current study, which was based on a 76 per cent return, should be accepted as very high and convincing. If there have been representations by some birth mothers to the Committee against Section 51, these cannot reflect the views of the vast majority of birth mothers. The best that can be said for them is that they should be able to place a veto not on information but simply on face to face contact. Because preferences are not usually static they should also be able to change their mind. The suggested changes in the Adoption Bill would, in my view, bring about untold misery to those adopted after the enactment of this piece of legislation. If the changes are based on anecdotal type evidence it is more regrettable. If the proposed legislation goes forward it will be a retrograde step. On the basis of the evidence produced from our current study I would urge the Committee to leave things as they are. 
 If anything I have been urging for years now that birth parents should have an equivalent right. When the adoption review first began, over a decade ago now, it was expected that future legislation would stipulate for adoption agencies to have a duty to provide intermediary services for birth mothers. It is disappointing that this has not been prescribed in the Bill. If it is the government 's intention to overhaul and modernise adoption then there needs to be a clause which ensures that this important opportunity is provided.

Examination of Witnesses

Professor John Triseliotis and Professor Sonia Jackson, called in and examined.

David Hinchliffe: I welcome my colleagues to the second part of our sitting and I welcome two new witnesses. Would you please briefly introduce yourselves?

Professor Sonia Jackson: I have just retired as Professor of Applied Social Studies at the University of Wales, Swansea. My background is partly in social work and partly in psychology. I was originally a clinical psychologist. I have been researching on the subject of children in the care system for about 25 years. This year I published three books, which may be relevant. One is about stability and instability in the care system and the other two relate to the education—or miseducation—of children in care.

Professor John Triseliotis: I am Emeritus Professor at the University of Edinburgh, and a Visiting Professor and Senior Research Fellow at Strathclyde university. I have been a director of social work and education at Edinburgh university for many years. I have researched separated children for about 55 years now, and published a couple of dozen books on issues to do with separated children. I am a half-adopted Scot, internationally adopted at the adult age of 30.

David Hinchliffe: Some of us around this table were reading your books many years ago.

Robert Walter: My question is really directed to both Professor Jackson and Professor Triseliotis, but I shall start with Professor Triseliotis. On the question of access to birth records, do you think that birth parents should have the right to protect their identity from adopted children and others if they so wish?

Professor Triseliotis: No, I do not. For me, this is a very sad day because I have deja vu from 26 years ago. I carried out the initial research for the Houghton committee, to produce probably the first video film about access to records and what adopted people feel. The committee, on the basis of our evidence, was persuaded. When the Children Act 1975 came to a similar committee, similar issues were raised at the time by a section of the press. They said that Pandora's box would be opened if access to records were allowed.
 Some portrayed adopted people as vindictive, as possible blackmailers, and as abusers of any facility. We had then had that facility in Scotland for 30 years. Now it is 70 years since the facility has been available in Scotland, and 25 years in England and Wales. There has been no incident of adopted people having been proved to be vindictive or blackmailers. I am not saying that not one single adopted person could be like that, but there are many others who are not adopted who are blackmailers and accusers and their rights are not being taken away.

David Hinchliffe: Why do you think that the position has changed?

Professor Triseliotis: I cannot understand—it came out of the blue. I thought that we would have to fight, but this was 25 years ago. Other countries, on the basis of our research and experience, changed their laws. My view is that adopted people are seen as a soft option, a soft target group. We have fought for 30 or 40 years now to dispel the view that adopted people are second-class citizens. This is what is now being reintroduced for no apparent reason.
 If a birth child were to be deprived of their birth certificate or of possible access to their parents, there would be an outcry, and yet every year there are many birth children who murder their parents. They murder their brothers or their sisters or their grandparents, but there is no call to deprive them of their rights.

David Hinchliffe: Professor Jackson, do you concur with your colleague's views?

Professor Jackson: Absolutely, yes. I think that it would be an extremely retrograde step if this clause were to pass into law. I am not aware of any incidents in which adopted children have attacked birth parents, but there are many, many hundreds where they have been very pleased indeed to be able to trace their birth parents, and have usually been welcomed.
 I have just come back from Australia, and I was very struck by a book called ``Empty Cradles'', which is the account of the quest of the children who were forced to emigrate from England to Australia. It is about their desperate wish to find out about their origins and trace their birth parents—often, sadly, too late. I think that I agree with the witness in the previous sitting, who said that it would be devastating if people were refused access to their birth certificates. People have now had that access, of course, for 25 years.

Robert Walter: The Chairman and I are well aware of ``Empty Cradles'', because we conducted an inquiry into the matter for the House of Commons. However, I wish to pursue the point and get an answer from both of you. Is a compromise possible between the Government's position and the view that you have expressed whereby the birth parents could agree that the adoptees would have access to birth records but would undertake not to make contact?

Professor Jackson: It is a civil right to have access to your birth certificate, as Professor Triseliotis said. I do not see that the birth parents should have the ability to block that right.

Professor Triseliotis: Let me put it another way. Each year, certainly, we have cases of people who are mentally ill and released from hospital. Occasionally, some of them commit crimes, even murder. Psychiatrists themselves are not always clear who is likely to do this, but because there are occasionally crimes of that sort, there has been not been a call that mentally ill people should not be released from hospitals. Neither have there been calls for parole to stop because, occasionally, people on parole commit crimes. I think society has to accept certain risks. The role of society is to try to protect people, and if parents feel they are harassed by a child they parted with for adoption years ago, there are laws that should be used to protect them. I think in a society that values blood ties and kinship, to try to deprive a section of that society—British society—from having access to that blood tie and that kinship is a deprivation of basic human rights.

Hilton Dawson: I agree with every word that has been said about the right of adopted people to access their birth records. I am slightly surprised by the view that birth parents should have a converse right to contact their children as adults, and I would appreciate an explanation of that. Is the correct balance not reflected in the current position, whereby adopted people can make contact and birth parents can make known their willingness to be contacted?

Professor Triseliotis: We take account of studies about birth parents who parted with children for adoption. We did one 10 years ago and we are doing one at the moment. We are looking at the perspective of all three parties to adoption: the adopted people, the adoptive parents and the birth parents. We know from these studies that birth parents cannot put this episode behind them—it has been very traumatic and very difficult, and they are haunted by continued guilt. Many of them have mental health problems as a result. They are worried about whether the child is doing well or not. I think it is fair, in the same way that there have been—not always—mental health issues, identity issues and esteem issues in relation to adopted people, that there are also issues about mental health and about concerns and guilt that permeate the lives of many birth mothers.

Hilton Dawson: I accept everything that you say about the pain experienced by birth parents. However, if the proposal were accepted, would there be circumstances in which people who had abused their children and proved seriously detrimental to the children were allowed into such children's lives in future? Should we not try to resist that? If the children want to make contact, that is fine, but should we not protect them from people who have abused them?

Professor Triseliotis: There may be, occasionally, dramatic cases of that sort. I do a fair amount of work for the courts. Things are much more grey at the levels at which parents may neglect and sometimes abuse—sometimes, there are serious abuse cases. Such children are often older when they come to courts and the parents' rights are taken away from them. Those children have access to a brother or sister. Contact is not difficult for the children. I think that it is setting up a worst possible scenario to deprive a lot of people of possibilities that are essential to them.

Kevin Brennan: Would not a more acceptable middle way be a much more active service available to birth parents to establish and signal the fact that they wish to contact adopted children in adulthood?

Professor Triseliotis: Let me put it like this. Even in 1969-70, when we carried out the first research into adopted people searching for the records in Scotland, the vast majority of them were looking for intermediaries—for people to help them. Only one out of 75 turned up at his mother's door to say, ``I'm so and so.'' Adopted people like to have facilities—they turn to people to help them through it. Our experience is that birth mothers also want to have that kind of facility. Now that the services are expanding and developing, that will come naturally without having to make specific laws.
 Some legislation works well, and in my 35 years of research in child care if I thought that one piece of legislation would work well, it would be this one. But to be told suddenly that it is to be changed is incredible.

Professor Jackson: I can only agree, but I do not feel so strongly that birth parents should have a right to access their birth children without going through an intermediary. I would agree with Hilton Dawson's position on that.

Kevin Brennan: In the case of birth parents, should they not at least have a right to have their wish to contact their adopted child signalled actively to that child, even though they do not necessarily have the right to identify and locate the child?

Professor Jackson: Yes.

Kevin Brennan: Are either of you aware of any academic or organisation involved in adoption—apart from the Department of Health—that thinks it is a good idea to change the current provisions enabling adopted children to have access to their birth certificates?

Professor Jackson: As I understand it, all voluntary organisations are in agreement that that would be a retrograde step and are opposed to it.

Professor Triseliotis: To my knowledge, I know of no one who is really for the proposal. Scotland has reduced to 16 the age at which adopted people can have access because it has caused no problems for 70 years.

Professor Jackson: There is a much better understanding now of the importance of identity to children who have to live away from their own families.

Jonathan Djanogly: Regarding birth parents contacting adopted children, is it not important to distinguish between pre-1976 cases and post-1976 cases? For example, in pre-1976 cases, it is possible—indeed, it is frequently the case—that a lot of the children do not even know that they were adopted, so to have a birth parent contact them could lead to a significant change in their lives that would be less likely in a post-1976 case.

Professor Triseliotis: I do not really support the view of keeping secrets because the adoptive parents chose not to tell. It is regrettable if any parents are still doing so, but I would not be surprised. Eventually, it will come out—it is unlikely that it will be kept a secret—but the longer that it is kept a secret, the more the trauma will be at the end.

Jonathan Djanogly: But at the point at which those parents adopted, they had the right to make that choice. That was the basis on which they adopted.

Professor Triseliotis: Interestingly enough, the study that we are doing now—we rushed to analyse the figures, to provide the Committee with a more objective view—shows that 94 per cent. of birth mothers who have been sought out by their children were pleased or very pleased that they did so. Only an insignificant number have doubts, and 94 per cent. were positive or very positive. In human research, it is rare to get those kinds of percentages.

Professor Jackson: I support that. It is a pity if we get completely stuck on this point, on which there seems to be a wide measure of agreement.

David Hinchliffe: We will move on.

Julian Brazier: Just before we move on to placement orders, I want to be clear on the current point. Do you both propose that it should be possible for birth parents to signal to children who are under 18 that they wish to contact them?

Professor Triseliotis: We are saying that about children over the age of 17 or 18.

Julian Brazier: I just wanted to be clear about that.
 We heard testimony yesterday from British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering. It said that only a high threshold should be allowed for cases in which children were placed for adoption against the wishes of their parents. Its suggested wording was: 
``adoption would be so significantly better for the child than any other option as to justify overriding the parents' wishes.'' 
Do you feel that the Bill, which makes the child's interests paramount—I am trying to put it in a neutral way—is correctly drafted; or do you support BAAF's call for a much higher hurdle?

Professor Jackson: I would be absolutely opposed to it. There is clear evidence, which is acknowledged by the Government and was repeatedly stated in the Lords debate on 24 October, that the care system has not been a good parent to the children for whom it has been providing substitute care; in particular, it has been unable to provide stability for a high proportion of children who cannot live at home. My research on stability and instability shows—I think that Professor Triseliotis' review would agree with this—that adoption is by far the most stable form of substitute placement. Of course, it is not suitable for all children, but if we put the welfare of children above the interests of the parents, as we should under the Children Act 1989, I do not think that raising the threshold would be a good idea—in fact, it would be a very bad idea.
 We still have only 5 per cent. of children being adopted from care, which is a very low proportion, although many of those children will never be able to live with their parents again. The Government's initiative has already had good results—the proportion rose by 40 per cent. between 1998 and the present, which is encouraging—but I still feel that there is enormous scope to raise the number of children adopted from care who cannot live with their parents. Obviously, I want to emphasise that the best thing is for children to live in and grow up with their own families, but we know that many children cannot do so, and adoption is by far the best alternative for them.

Julian Brazier: In summary, would you say that adopting the BAAF proposal would seriously jeopardise the Government's objective of increasing the number of children being adopted?

Professor Jackson: That is my opinion.

Professor Triseliotis: I said before that I do a fair amount of court work and I see lots of cases involving children of different ages who are subject to different decisions and different judges in all parts of the UK. I agree with Professor Jackson that to raise the level higher would deprive many children of the opportunity of adoption. Usually, two alternatives are put to judges—long-term foster care and a residence order. First, one of our research studies has clearly demonstrated that what children value is when their legal rights are in the hands of their parents or adopted parents. I am publishing an article in next year's Child and Family Social Work journal—I could send an advance copy to the Committee—in which I outline the advantages and disadvantages of those two forms of long-term substitute parenting.
 I make no bones that adoption is the preferred option—instead of long-term foster care, with its unpredictabilities and uncertainties. The possibilities of a long-term foster care placement lasting to the age of 16 or 17—it should extend beyond that—are about one in twelve. That is a very low percentage. However, the biggest advantage that we have found in adoption is the emotional and legal security that it provides to children. Before we conducted one of our studies, it never occurred to us that the children themselves would place so much value on legally—as they put it—belonging to their parents. ``By law'', they said, ``they are ours. By law, I can call them mum and dad. By law, I belong here.'' 
 That kind of emotional commitment is the basic difference that we found. Most foster carers are excellent, but they come into fostering with a different kind of commitment. Long-term fostering has an opt-out clause. Adoption can have an opt-out clause, but it is a different one—the commitment is different. That is what we are trying to say: there is that emotional difference, which the children themselves value. Children and adults have known from time immemorial what adoption is about and the kinds of feelings that it raises. They do not understand guardianship orders, long-term permanent fostering, and all that: as we found, those do not convey that kind of emotional security.

Jonathan R Shaw: With regard to the issue of children living with foster carers, is not a part of the opt-out clause—as you describe it—due to the old legislation, which meant that young people left care at 16 or 17? We have changed that law: young people can stay in care until they 21—and up to the age of 24, if they are in education or training. If that legislation had been introduced, say, 10 years ago, would that have had an effect on the outcome of your study?

Professor Triseliotis: The study by York university projected the kinds of figures that I mentioned earlier. About one in 12, or one in eight—a very small percentage—last as long as they are needed.
 What I am trying to say is that, increasingly, you will have more breakdowns in both adoption and fostering because of the kind of child that now goes to either. Nevertheless, we did an analysis by age group, which is an important factor, and even when you do that, there are still higher levels of breakdown within long-term fostering. And nobody knows what will happen after the five years—the period at which most studies stop. Attrition continues up to the ages of 16 and 17. If they last up to 16, they do not need the legislation to tell them that the child becomes almost part of the family. 
 At the same time, I am saying that there are situations in which long-term fostering is the appropriate solution. I am dealing with such a case at the moment. Two children, aged five and seven, have been living with their foster parents for three or four years. They cannot return to their families. The foster carers cannot adopt them, for several reasons, but they are prepared to make a commitment to keep them. Now, you cannot free those children for adoption under any kind of order. It is unlikely that an uprooting and transplanting of that sort will work. So of course, what you do there is support the fostering arrangement to make life good for the children, to last them to find a social place in their life.

Hilton Dawson: We have heard some powerful evidence today. Could our witnesses give us their ideas about the future of the new concept of special guardianship? With the transfer of parental responsibilities, it will obviously be a new means of securing stability for children in long-term placements.
 Professor Jackson: If it is going to work, it will need a great deal of support and explanation, because it seems to be quite close to the concept of custodianship, which you will remember came in under the Children Act 1975 and was never really implemented at all. I think it could suffer the same fate, for the reason that Professor Triseliotis has given—that it is not meaningful to lay people and to children. But I do see that it has a place. 
 I would like to make another point, which is about the relationship between fostering and adoption. Most older children, if you look at the statistics, are actually adopted by their foster parents; but we know that a lot of local authorities are not at all keen to encourage foster parents to adopt because it means they lose a resource. I do not know if there is some way that the Bill could take account of that and counteract it, because it seems to me that in those cases the local authorities are definitely not acting for the welfare of the children, since they know that adoptions by foster parents of older children are among the most successful—I think they ought to be given every encouragement. 
 Professor Triseliotis: I agree with a lot what Professor Jackson has said. I hope you do not regard me as cynical, but of course these provisions existed before: we used to call them guardianship in Scotland when you called it custodianship; when you called it custodianship here, we called it guardianship in Scotland—to make sure we were a bit different. It has not been taken up, as many of you know, and residence orders have not been taken up. The main reason is what we found from some of our studies—that there is always the possibility of reversing the arrangement. The new guardianship order has that possibility, too. I hope it works, because in the kind of example I gave before—and there are many like that—it may produce a little more security. If can produce a bit more security, it can go some way, but do not put too many hopes into that.

Tim Loughton: It would be useful to have some more statistics. How many foster parents later became adoptive parents of the children placed with them? The shortage of willing foster parents is obviously a key resource problem, and what Professor Jackson said about local authorities wanting to keep them is true. What is the proportion of mixed foster and adoptive parents—parents who have adopted children that they had previously fostered but who still act as foster parents for other children? Is that unusual? Should it be encouraged?

Professor Triseliotis: It is not unusual, but I could not really give you exact figures. We know that some 13 per cent. of foster carers each year adopt their foster children, but how many of those continue? I certainly know in our—I should go back perhaps. We did a survey of 1,000 foster carers in Scotland. I know that a number of them left, but they came into fostering with that explicit purpose: they would foster and if they adopted the child, that is what they were going to do. But quite a number of others did not stop fostering.
 There can be issues, and one of the issues that we have come across is when a foster family adopts one child that is fostered but does not adopt another. There can be feelings between the children when this happens. It is not as clear as that, but I would like to see, like the example before, more foster parents being allowed to adopt, simply because it is not good for children to be moved from one family to another; children themselves do not like it, and the older they are the less they like the idea of being moved.

Tim Loughton: Are you saying that ideally there should be a system whereby there is a probationary fostering period that becomes an adoptive period? Is that an ideal that we should try to achieve? Is there empirical evidence to support the stability of such a rite of passage, compared with cases in which people have adopted someone whom they did not know so well before?

Professor Triseliotis: I wrote in one of my articles that for some of the more difficult children and when neither side is ready to make a commitment, an arrangement can be made for fostering that could be developed into adoption. Some children are themselves cautious about that, and some carers are cautious. There is no harm in allowing for that possibility, when both sides may become more certain that that is what they want.

Professor Jackson: I would like to see a position in which, when children are being looked after and there is no realistic possibility of their returning to their families, adoption is considered as a contingency plan right from the beginning, not as a last resort. In the past 20 years or so, there has been a negative culture in social work in relation to adoption, which has been unfortunate. One of the things that I have heard over and over again from young people who have grown up in care is, ``Why wasn't I adopted?''

David Hinchliffe: Presumably, you would share the view that recently, and in particular since the Children Act 1989, social workers have placed too much emphasis on supporting contact with the natural family and restoring the child to the natural family, rather than on moving away from the natural family and making a clean break?

Professor Jackson: Restoring to the natural family is one thing, and contact can mean a lot of different things. From the point of view of identity, it is important that children should be allowed to preserve a connection with their birth family, but not necessarily face-to-face contact. The 1989 Act has been misinterpreted by many social workers to mean that they are obliged to keep trying to return children to parents who are not able to look after them and may, indeed, abuse or neglect them.

Professor Triseliotis: May I qualify that slightly? There are two aspects. One is that of generational continuity, which we have been talking about in relation to access to records. The other one, which is new in the past 10 to 15 years, is that of emotional continuity. Some of the children adopted now are older and have emotional links with a mother, grandparent or an uncle. You cannot excise those links from a four-year-old, five-year-old, six-year-old or seven-year-old. We know that some children need to maintain that link, and it may have to involve face-to-face contact periodically—maybe three or four times a year. That is not the same as share parenting. Contact of that sort does not damage the placement or the relationship. Children are aware of the differences between different types of relationships.

Professor Jackson: I agree with that.

Hilton Dawson: The vast majority of children who come into care are fostered, and the vast majority of children who come into care return home after a short period. Are there dangers in giving foster carers the idea that fostering can lead to adoption, when in fact what we might want those foster carers to do is work actively with the child, the family and the social worker to ensure a safe and secure return to the natural parents?

Professor Jackson: We are now distinguishing much more clearly between short-term placements of the kind that you are describing, and situations in which it is clear that the child will not be able to return safely to the birth family.

Professor Triseliotis: That kind of possibility can arise, but strangely enough it is the foster carers who adopt their foster children who run the most open forms of adoption and are prepared to see what is best for the child. They are much more prepared to accommodate a member of the birth family, for example, if it is important to the child. Thus, it can go either way.

Professor Jackson: May I reinforce John's point about contact? It is not only the mother or father who may be emotionally important to the child. There is a wide range of other relations and friends.

Professor Triseliotis: This is for those who want to change section 51 of the Adoption Act 1976. A survey by Lowe and Murch found that 80 per cent. of the children adopted in the middle 1990s had had some form of contact with members of their birth family. Many had indirect contact, through letters and so on, but a high proportion had direct contact with mothers and siblings. Many siblings had each other's addresses; they knew where each one was. To try to police an area such as that, under the current adoption system, would be a nightmare, and it would be unnecessary policing.

Julian Brazier: I entirely take the point about grandparents and, critically, sibling contact. However, unless I misunderstood you, the logical progression of face-to-face contact with birth parents would be to end up eventually with the Australian system, which was referred to earlier. They have virtually open adoption. The effect has been a complete collapse of adoption numbers, because adoptive parents, already taking on a difficult role by adopting abused and damaged children, also have to take on the idea of occasional face-to-face contact with the birth parents. The latest figures that I have for Australia indicate that the entire number of children adopted in the past year was less than 500.

Professor Jackson: With respect, that has much more to do with the ``stolen generation'' and the relationship with the Aboriginal population. That is a large issue that we should perhaps not get into.
 I see that we are running out of time. I wanted to make a point about post-adoption services.

David Hinchliffe: By all means, lead us in to it.

Professor Triseliotis: May I just say that I warned the Australians in 1989, when I was there, that an anti-adoption attitude was developing in government circles; however, that was different from the situation that we have in Britain. We must not confuse the two. I regret what happened in Australia; I warned them.

David Hinchliffe: Professor Jackson, you mentioned support services.

Professor Jackson: I want to make a point about clause 4. As so often happens with anything from a social services perspective, education is sidelined, whereas it is absolutely crucial to the success of adoption and fostering, too. If children are not settled and doing well in school, that has an impact on their home life, particularly if they are excluded from school and no placement is found quickly for them, or if they are relegated to a substandard kind of education—pupil referral units and that kind of thing. That puts a strain on the adoptive relationship, which it sometimes is not able to withstand. That is partly to blame for the relatively high—although still quite low; I think that it is about 8 per cent.—level of placements that do not proceed to adoption.
 If we want adoption to succeed, it is essential to include education personnel—teachers—in the post-adoption support service. I do not think that they will be included unless something stronger is added to clause 4.

Tim Loughton: Education is a good example. Many of the witnesses discussed a multi-agency approach to support services. What other support services would you advocate? We use the great phrase ``support services'' when we place obligations on local authorities to provide support services after doing an assessment. What does that mean in practical terms?

Professor Jackson: The most glaring gap is in psychiatric services. I have just published a comparative study of the health of looked-after children in care and of children who are living at home. What shouts at one from the study is the desperate need for psychological services for children who would not necessarily be diagnosed as mentally ill using strictly psychiatric criteria, but whose behaviour is very disturbed and where it is far beyond the capacity of parents to deal with that behaviour without help and support. The problem is that those services are not currently available. I know that the Government are trying to do something about that, but the impact on children who are placed for adoption is probably much greater than on children who are living with their own families. The risk to adopted children is much greater.
 With regard to education, the big problem is that children who come from care to be adopted bring with them a range of educational problems, especially a reputation that makes them unacceptable to schools. That reputation may be completely undeserved. They may be of normal intelligence and behaviour, but simply the fact that they have been in care stigmatises them and makes schools reluctant to accept them. 
 A useful example from New South Wales is that a child who has been in care must be given preference for a school place over a child who lives in their own family. That is a legal requirement and it would be useful to introduce that in this country.

David Hinchliffe: I am interested in the point that you have just made. Some years ago, Robert Walter and I were on a Health Committee inquiry into looked-after children. The most surprising conclusion that we reached related to the failings of the education system, rather than the care system.

Jacqui Smith: Both.

David Hinchliffe: Yes, both. However, I was surprised about the schooling issue. The schools were not interested, because the youngsters often had problems. The emphasis in the league tables is on achievement, and they were not going to be achievers in some areas, so you have made an important point.

Tim Loughton: That is very interesting, Professor Jackson. My understanding of support services has been based much more on people from local authorities coming round and making sure that a family has enough to live on and that the food and housing are adequate, whereas you highlighted education and also the health service aspect.
 Who should be carrying out the assessment orders? We heard that there will now be a duty on local authorities to provide assessments to establish the problem, if called upon to do so. It is our worry that that may take an indeterminate amount of time, and that all the resources go into assessment before we deliver the support services. You say that the assessment issue is more complex. Who should be carrying out that assessment, and what qualifications should they have?

Professor Jackson: I have a difficulty, because I agree so much with people who have voiced fears that all the effort would go into assessment instead of providing services. The whole history of social work with children has been bedevilled by the obsession with assessing children, rather than providing help to them. Education is a key aspect, and I fear that unless that section is strengthened, it will be sidelined, as it has in the past. The education authority should have a duty to provide services, and it should not just be seen as the responsibility of the social services.

Professor Triseliotis: I agree absolutely with what Professor Jackson has said, but I draw attention to a piece of research from York university that evaluated several services that are offered to children in care, especially in foster care. There are similar issues in adoption. The service that came out well was the one offered by educational psychologists. I would like to see the research replicated to see whether it helped, because if it is true, we may have made a breakthrough and can establish exactly what educational psychologists offer the children that makes a difference.

David Hinchliffe: The final main topic that we want to talk about is the right of non-married couples to adopt. I do not know whether you were in the previous session but we had an interesting exchange towards the end. My personal concern is that there is a conflict between the welfare principle and denying unmarried couples the right to adopt. I look at it from the point of view of one of several elderly social workers around the table.
 I recall a case in the 1970s when I was involved in the approval of two women as foster parents for a child. The perception of the women now would be different to what it was then. We had to go to the chair of the committee for approval because there was a suggestion that they might have been lesbians. It was controversial at the time, but they were approved because it was deemed to be in the best interest of the child, although that term was not used in law. It would concern me if the Bill precluded such an arrangement being made permanent. What are your views on that?

Professor Triseliotis: I was lecturing in Spain two weeks ago and when I said that we have single parents who can adopt or be foster carers, they were astonished that we would do a terrible thing like that. However, when they told me that they keep little babies in institutions before they go to adoption, in case they get attached to their carers, it was my chance to be astonished. You can see how we can misinterpret things, even though everybody says that we talk from a research base.
 My stance concerns the quality of the relationship, which was mentioned earlier. There are so many children out there with so many different needs that for some of them whether the carers are a single person or couples—whether married or unmarried—is unimportant. Some 33 per cent. of the population have children without being married, and in another 15 years they will be the majority. Should we exclude a group of people from offering to children something they have to offer? That is the crucial thing—what do they have to offer? That is the basis. The fact that people are married is, in my view, neither here nor there.

Professor Jackson: I strongly agree with the point that was made in the last session that, in effect, if unmarried people are not allowed to adopt jointly, one will adopt and the other will just look to parental responsibility, but that that will not give the child the security of the legal attachment to both parents. If one parent dies or they split up, the child does not have the choice of to which parent they belong—they belong to the one who legally adopted them. Why should that be? If both parents have been equally involved in their upbringing, I think that the welfare of the child should be the only consideration.

Meg Munn: The angle that I want to explore, which you have already mentioned in some detail, is about unmarried foster parents and the importance of them being allowed to adopt, if it is right for the child. You spoke in detail about how that matters to the child and how being able to be adopted as opposed to any other order helps the permanency and stability of the relationship.

Professor Triseliotis: May I comment on the research based on single people, mainly women, adopting? There were high levels of satisfaction on the part of the children, who were special needs children. Not only that, but—this question came out earlier in relation to the general population—they examined the attitude of the youngsters now, in their late teens and early 20s, to the relationship with their adoptive mothers. The positive relationships were much higher than the group of children in the general population. Something like 70 per cent. were getting on well with their parents, compared with 85 per cent. who got on well their adoptive parents.

Professor Jackson: There are lots of reasons why people may decide not to get married formally but still have a very stable relationship It is most unfortunate if those people are denied the right to adopt children to whom they could give a good home.

Jonathan R Shaw: You said that 13 per cent. of foster carers adopt children whom they are looking after. Is there anything within that research that can compare the success of unmarried foster carers with that of married foster carers?

Professor Triseliotis: You mean, who subsequently adopted?

Jonathan R Shaw: Yes.

Professor Triseliotis: Not specifically.

Jonathan R Shaw: Are you aware of any research?

Professor Triseliotis: No. We first have to start separating the outcome of adoption between those who have previously been foster parents and those who were not. Very often they are lumped together and there can be qualitative differences. Then we can look at single foster carers who adopt compared with those who are married. What we know about single foster carers is that they are much more likely to last longer. They are more satisfied and carry a bigger commitment to the task and that is objective.
 The witnesses withdrew.

Memorandum from After Adoption - Introduction

The purpose of our evidence is to highlight certain aspects of the Bill as laid out in the following document. We have, however, decided to use the time allocated to us the Special Standing Committee to focus our evidence in two parts: 
 A. After Adoption welcomes the introduction of this Bill which certainly raises the awareness of the need for Adoption support services in line with the aims of our organisation. 
 We are delighted with the stated intention to improve Adoption Support Services for Children and Families but we would like a clearer statement that those needs could be lifelong. 
 There seems to be no clarity in the Bill about who is responsible for funding these services as and when needed. 
 B. We would be extremely concerned if the intention of the Bill was to diminish existing rights of adopted people.

Our Evidence in relation to the Bill - 1 Maintenance of an adoption service

After Adoption welcomes the provisions in Clauses 3,4 and 5 clarifying the duties of a local authority to provide a comprehensive adoption service to all parties as detailed in 3 (1), (a), (b), (c). 
 We also welcome this being extended to include other people i.e. siblings or other birth relatives in Clause 3(3).

2 Requirement of Local Authority to provide support services

We would wish the government to be clearer in detail about the requirement of local authorities to provide support services not just to the right to request an assessment of need in order to access services when difficulties arrive. In order not to pathologize parties touched by Adoption support services need to be there as a matter of right, not as assessment. After Adoption has provided Post Placement services from the point of placement for families in five local authorities. Early research into these services shows a significant lower breakdown rate and a higher satisfaction rate for both children and families. 
 We are pleased that Clause 4 appears to extend the duty to carry out an assessment of need for people involved in existing adoptions, not only those in the future. This duty to provide an assessment needs to extend to a duty to provide services both proactively and reactively. 
 We are concerned that Clause 4 (9) does not go far enough to address the problems caused by multi-agency need for support. Clause 4 (9), requires health or education authorities to be notified for the need for a provision of services but does not detail a requirement on behalf of these authorities to comply with the request.

3 Post Adoption Support-inter-relationships with multi-agency involvement

We welcome Clause 4 (10) which places a duty on one local authority to comply with the request from another local authority to help in the exercise of their functions in relation to adoption support services there continues to be ongoing confusion about which local authority or voluntary adoption agency is responsible for providing 
 Adoption support services. After Adoption recognises some Voluntary Adoption agencies provide some Post Adoption work but often go back to the Local Authority for funding of specialist services. The arguments and the passing of responsibility often leave families without support until sadly the placement breaks down. This too is the position for birth families. We feel that the bill needs to clarify which local authority has the responsibility to provide these services.

4 Services to Birth Parents/Relatives

After Adoption welcomes clause 3 where it makes it clear the duty to provide Adoption support services to extend to natural parents and former guardians. However the Bill does not address whether this service should be extended to include the provision of intermediary services to birth relatives wishing to make contact with the adopted person in adulthood. At present the provision of services to Birth Parents/Relatives is very patchy. After Adoption has come into contact with local authorities who openly refuse to offer any services whatsoever. The Department of Health guidelines issued in August 200 for intermediary services for Birth Relatives has been implemented by very few Local Authorities therefore it is a postcode lottery as to whether a Birth Parent or any other Birth relative will receive a service.

5 Contact for adopted children with their Birth Families

We welcome the clarity under Clause 25 (1) about provision for contact under the Children Act 1989 ceasing to have effect and the provision to consider contact arrangements before a placement order is made under Clause 26 (4). We have experienced much confusion in the past about the role and purpose of contact under the Children Act 1989 and that of the purpose of contact indirect or direct contributing to the life long needs of the adopted person enabling them to maintain their links with the past or have knowledge of who they are. These sections will provide clarity. 
 We welcome the positive comments about contact and know from our experience from After Adoption that there is no doubt that the birth family remains important to adopted children and adopted adults. Regular support groups run at After Adoption for all ages of children and it is clear that a great many of these children would wish to be able to have regular news and information of their Birth Family members. This is particularly around Siblings and Birth Mothers. After Adoption is regularly involved in supporting adoptive families reopening a closed adoption in order that their children will be reassured about the health and welfare of their Birth Family.

6 Adoption by married couples or single people

In relation to clause 47 After Adoption continues to be concerned that the bill still restricts adoption to married couples or single people. We are mindful of the Adoption Convention of 1967, Article 6 which prohibits adoption by unmarried couples, and with respect, we feel it is timely to reconsider obligations under this Convention. 
 We are concerned that the bill does not allow for two adults in a stable relationship to adopt a child jointly. In our changing society where so many children are born to unmarried parents and a number of other children are successfully parented by same sex couples we feel it is important that these relationships are acknowledged and the commitment of both adults to the child respected. 
 From our experience of supporting a growing number of same sex couples we have noted a trend that suggests these couples are more prepared to adopt `harder to place' children and are more open to support to make these placements work. This openness to support results in more successful placements for these children.

7 Disclosure of information about a person's adoption

Clauses 53-62 relating to the disclosure of information about an adopted person are very complex. We would be extremely concerned if the intention of this bill is to diminish existing rights for adopted people. 
 Our experience here at After Adoption shows large numbers of 18 year olds walk through our doors when they come to University in Greater Manchester. It feels like a `right of passage' when leaving home for the first time. Many of these young people feel stress and divided loyalties doing this. This has also been replicated in the other areas we work. It is important for adopted adults at whatever age they choose to take forward this process, and be supported by the establishment by acknowledging this is a normal thing to want to know about your origins. 
 We as a part of good practice have regular post adoption panels, with local authorities, where the reopening of closed adoptions and contact for children under 18 with birth families and siblings is planned and carried forward. Young people open their adoptions with the support of their adoptive families. 
 After Adoption receives approximately 1000 referrals per year from adult adopted people through our freephone helpline. The majorities of these adults believes that their Adoption is successful but still want access to their Birth information and believe that their Birth Family is still significant to them.

8 Status conferred by adoption

The wording of clause 64 (1) that an adopted child is to be treated as if he or she has been born as a child of that marriage is not a helpful statement. We believe that adoptive families have additional tasks in relation to their children and accepting their past and the need to know about it is one of these tasks.

9 Framework for allowances

After Adoption is concerned about the absence of a national framework for Post Adoption allowances. We regularly see discrepancies from one area to another. We also are aware that generous allowances in the United States following President Clinton's Adoption initiative saw a 66 per cent increase in stepparent adoption, a 16 per cent increase in stranger adoption and a 14 per cent increase in kinship adoption. The American initiative is on line to exceed its targets and we have no doubt that the financial package has helped this enormously.

10 Special Guardianship

After Adoption welcomes the introduction of special guardianship orders in clause 110. We feel this will provide a valuable option for some children for whom adoption is inappropriate. Many children placed with grandparents or other extended families will be able to have the security of this order. Some children do not want to severe their legal link with their Birth Family and do not want to change their names. We feel that this order will be right for these children. 
 We welcome the changes in the Bill in Chapter 2, Amendments to the Children Act 1989, section 14 F, the inclusion of provision of support services.

Conclusion

After Adoption welcomes the Adoption and Children bill but is clear that there is a need for the bill to address gaps and confusion about responsibilities which exists at present. We are happy that the government has introduced this bill in a consultative way and hope that we will be able to present to the Special Standing Committee our particular experiences that may help improve the detail of the bill. We hope that this committee will afford us the opportunity to represent our users who are all parties to adoption in Introduction to After Adoption.

Young people's comments in relation to adoption support

After Adoption run groups, clubs and family days for young people and their families as part of our comprehensive adoption support services. These are forums where users of our services are given the opportunity to tell us what they need. We have included some of the comments from young people aged 11-16 who attended groups held across our organisation over the last three months.

About support - General

`I think that help should be there if needs be—I think a 24 hour phone helpline should be activated where you can discuss any problems that may arise in this difficult situation. The call centre should offer help, advice and answer questions. It should be open for adoptive parents as well as adoptive children. It should be open 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year all calls should be treated confidentially'. 
 `Basic support for the family.' 
 `If they aren't getting on ok they should find out why and what they can do to help and if they need a bigger house or car and things like that.' 
 `A backup plan e.g. if the family don't get on we have a way to make things better, like going to the fair with other adopted children and their families.'

Proactive support

` gives you a chance to meet other people with the same kind of background and to get to know other people like you' 
 `you can discuss things here that you wouldn't normally with other people' 
 `you can talk about things and they don't become problems' 
 `it shows you that people care about you and give up their time' 
 `helps you realise that you are not the only one to be adopted' 
 `you get to meet other people who are adopted and see if they feel the same way as you do.'About Contact

About Contact

`I think that contact between the two halves of the family should be in forced if that is what both of the parties want.' 
 `You should ask the child who they want to see because they want to see who they love, but they need to be safe.' 
 `By asking the children who they want to see and if they are safe for the children to see'. 
 `The children should see whoever they want to see.'

About information

`About our family history, why they were adopted and where they are going and what's going to happen.' 
 `Who and where their parents are and that they know what it means- adoption that is'. 
 `That it is not a bad thing' 
 `Need to know that brothers and sisters we don't see are ok'About After AdoptionVISION

About After Adoption - VISION

After Adoption to be a National Organisation also operating Internationally and offering user led services to all that want to use them.

MISSION

After Adoption's purpose is to enable people to deal with the difference adoption brings to their lives.

AIMS

—To provide independent adoption related services in partnership with other agencies. 
 —To develop innovative adoption projects. 
 —To raise awareness and create a better understanding of adoption to help remove the stigma and secrecy.

VALUES

—We believe that the impact of adoption is lifelong, and services need to be provided acknowledging this. 
 —We believe adoption is a social structure devised to care for children who are unable to be brought up in their birth family, and acknowledge that loss for all parties. 
 —We believe the stigma attached to adoption is potentially harmful to the health of all concerned. 
 —We recognise the inequalities that exist in society and aim to address those within this organisation. 
 —We recognise that within adoption, discrimination has occurred especially on the basis of race, class and disability. 
 —We value the contribution of those who have personal experience of adoption to design the services we provide. 
 We believe that the need to maintain connections is an essential part of family life.

THE HISTORY AND WORK OF AFTER ADOPTION

The 1975 Adoption Act introduced a statutory responsibility for a fully comprehensive adoption service, but did not define this. Consequently, support for those touched by adoption has been very limited. This lack of services prompted the formation of Post Adoption Services, Manchester in 1990, with small rented premises, a part-time Co-ordinator and a part-time assigned staff from both local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies. 
 The charity changed its name to After Adoption in 1992. After Adoption has continued to develop its services, and in 1996 developed service level agreements with most Local Authorities in the Northwest. With help from a grant from the National Lotteries Charities Board, the services were delivered in local areas. After Adoption tries to help people in the way that is most appropriate to them. This development has continued and we now deliver services in the North East, North West, Merseyside and Wales. After Adoption now has 68 paid staff and 100 volunteers. 
 After Adoption has continued to grow organically and has responded to need as we have identified this. 
 To deliver our services we use Social Workers, professional counsellors or volunteers, many with experience of adoption. We offer advice, information, counselling and family work, individually or in self help groups. The service can be offered face to face, by telephone, letter or e-mail. 
 The knowledge and experience of After Adoption staff, users and volunteers is appreciated not only by those who need our services directly, but also by other professionals and volunteers who work in the field of adoption. After Adoption provides highly valued training packages. Its unique expertise has been involved in National and International conferences. After Adoption provides information for local and central government on Post Adoption and Post Placement issues.
 After Adoption is now recognised throughout the UK as the leading agency in post adoption and post placement services. We are represented on a variety of government bodies such as the new Adoption Task Force and on the National Adoption standards working party. 
 After Adoption has recently been inspected by the Social Services Inspectorate and has been approved by the Department of Health as an Adoption Agency. 
 After Adoption is presently working in partnership with 52 local authorities in England and Wales providing a range of Post Adoption and Post Placement Support. We also run a free-phone and online help-line for young people throughout the UK called TALK ADOPTION.

Memorandum from the Who Cares? Trust - (1) INTRODUCTION TO THE WHO CARES? TRUST - Current work

We are a national charity in the child care field, working to improve public care for the 60,000 children and young people living in foster and residential care throughout the UK. We work with central and local government, the voluntary sector and children and young people themselves. Our work fits into three strands of influence and change:

(i) Re: Central and Local Government

We have been very influential in pushing for change to benefit the care population, particularly through Quality Protects 1999-2004, Education Guidance for young people in public care (DH/DfES 2000)and The Children (Leaving Care)Act 2000, in force since 1 .10.2001. 
 We have also conducted a range of consultations with children and young people for central government. We are currently involved in this way with the Social Exclusion Unit on a joint consultation questionnaire aimed at looked after children to assess their educational progress. 
 We have created a range of innovative development programmes for professionals and carers in local authorities to improve practice in education, health and wellbeing and preparation for independence, thereby creating more opportunities for children in public care, higher aspirations for them and greater expectations of them. All programmes are devised with the involvement of children and young people. 
 This approach to practice development offers the best of voluntary sector creativity whilst addressing all requirements of existing and new policy and legislation.

(ii) Trusted links with children and young people via: - Who Cares? Magazine

The only national publication for children in public care, purchased by the majority of local authorities in the UK for 31,000 children and young people aged 10-18 in their care. Some 50 different children contribute to each quarterly edition of this award winning magazine which combines information and fun whilst addressing key issues about care as expressed to us by children and young people themselves.

Special publications for children

We have produced many publications across a number of issues, including working with groups of children to communicate government policy to a child audience.

The Who Cares? Telephone Linkline Service

This has taken thousands of calls from children and young people across a whole range of issues.

CareZone -interactive online services for children in public care

This work to benefit children and young people across the UK is in development.

(2) KEY POINTS ON THE ADOPTION AND CHILDREN BILL

As will be clear from the above description of its work, the Trust does not run adoption services. However, because of the specific nature of its close work over many years with the looked after population, the organisation has been represented on the Cabinet Committee on Adoption and on The Adoption Partnership Council. The Trust wishes to put across to Committee Members what it has learned from children and young people in respect of adoption: 
 i) It is important to take on board the views of children and young people about such an important issue. The Trust devoted an edition of Who Cares? Magazine to ascertaining a balance of views from children and young people on adoption to ensure that they, as a group, had a say in and were not left out of the debate. A copy is enclosed for Committee Members. 
 ii) Adoption is not a ``one size fits all`` solution to the needs of all children considered for adoption. It is not understood widely enough that children in public care may prefer to cope with the ambiguity of knowing they cannot live with their family, yet still retain their identity, rather than change that existing identity and family situation through adoption. We are therefore pleased that the interests of the individual child are at the heart of the new Bill and that, where adoption is the appropriate course of action, legal proceedings will be speeded up. 
 iii) The Trust feels that it has not yet been able to communicate effectively enough the need for post-adoption support for both children and adoptive parents, in the best interests of children and successful relationships within the new family. The Bill does not at present propose anything better in this respect than current legislation offers. However satisfactory adoption proceedings may be for both parties, an enormous adjustment is to be made on both sides when adoption takes place. Children are still the most vulnerable parties yet, once adoption proceedings are completed, they are suddenly without recourse to any help from external sources if necessary. They need a softer transition and the opportunity for on-going support. 
 iv) Whilst we respect the point of view of newly adoptive parents, that they may wish to cut free from the very authorities who have vetted their suitability and scrutinised their behaviour preceding cases coming to court, we are still pressing for post adoption support to prevent adoptive families from breaking up. This is more likely to occur with older children (those adopted from 5 years upwards). 
 v) Most families experience some turbulence when children reach adolescence. This is a particularly difficult time for adoptive children as they search for their own identity. The reluctance of adoptive families to seek help, if they need it at this point, may lead to the adoption breaking down. We propose that, following adoption, both adoptive parents and individual children should have access to help from independent agencies, in the interests of ensuring successful adoption. This would allow for a range of possible services to support both children and adoptive parents finding the transition difficult and for advocacy for children to help them have an equal voice in the process.

Examination of Witnesses

Mrs. Maureen Crank and Ms Lynn Charlton, After Adoption; and Susanna Cheal, Chief Executive, and Jenny Robson, Director of Development, Who Cares? Trust, called in and examined.

David Hinchliffe: I welcome colleagues to this final part of the morning. I thank our witnesses for their co-operation with the inquiry. Could you each briefly introduce yourselves to the Committee?

Susanna Cheal (Who Cares? Trust): I am chief executive of the Who Cares? Trust, which was founded in 1992 to work towards improving public care for children and young people. We have campaigned for many of the changes going forward for the public care system at central Government level. We aim to improve practice in local authorities with innovative programmes to encourage aspirations and opportunities for children and to raise expectations of them. We are linked to 31,000 children through our magazine Who Cares?, copies of which we have provided, and our new interactive online services that we are developing for them.

Jenny Robson (Who Cares? Trust): I am director of development at the Who Cares? Trust, with special responsibility for the telephone linkline, which is a support and information service for children who are in the public care system.
 Ms Lynn Charlton (After Adoption): I am UK development director for After Adoption. My role is to develop partnerships with local authorities to provide adoption support services within the context of our organisation. My background is in social work. I have specialised in adoption since 1987.

Mrs. Maureen Crank (After Adoption): I am the chief executive of After Adoption. We were established in 1990 and now work in partnership with 52 local authorities across England and Wales. We have some national projects, one of which is a young people's freephone helpline called ``Talk Adoption'', and we have 200 to 300 calls a week from young adopted people.

Tim Loughton: May we return to adoption support services? I think that you sat in on previous sittings, so you heard our discussions. We take it from your submissions that you are strongly in favour of post-adoption support services. Can you give us an idea of how you think the Bill should be strengthened to make such services a statutory duty or meaningful, and of how they relate to the assessment procedure?

Mrs. Crank: I certainly feel that the Bill has been strengthened. It could be strengthened further to create an entitlement, but we come in at a much higher point than that: we think that support services should start from the point of placement. That would make it much easier for families and children to access them. With support services, we are talking about access to a helpline so that people can ask where they can buy a particular book, or find out about groups where adopted children can go along and have fun with other adopted children without necessarily talking about adoption all the time. We are talking about a helpline that young people can ring to talk about things with which they are struggling.
 We see the services much further up the process, so that if people need an assessment on a difficult issue at that point, it is easy for them to access it. That may avoid the need for services much further down the line, because they have already been hooked in. There should be someone who can access services from a wide range of places—be they health, education or child and adolescent mental health services—and bring them together when an issue arises.

Tim Loughton: That is largely information dissemination before support services are involved. You are saying that if there is better information, access to helplines, support groups and so on, support services may not be required.

Mrs. Crank: No, an assessment service for a problem. The assessment relates to a difficulty or a problem. If support services are there, there will still be problems and issues, but people will be much more able to access those services right from the beginning, before the problems become huge.
 Let me give the example of a child from Manchester who is being placed in Cornwall. At the point at which a support service plan is put together, the child is statemented. How can we pull in the education and psychiatric services that the child may need? It is a question of making people aware that they may need to provide a service for the child and that a named person will access those services for the family. As a result of the register, children will often be placed far and wide, although hopefully not all the time. This is about ensuring that services are there at the beginning and that people have access to services, not just to information.

Tim Loughton: Do you agree with previous witnesses that one of the primary services that needs to be provided relates to education and is that of an educational psychologist? Do you think that the emphasis will be on that or on other aspects?

Mrs. Crank: I think that it might be easier than that, because many local authorities already have psychologists seconded to them. It is a question of ensuring that people pick up on adoption issues and on the fact that a child needs the service at the point of placement, or may need it somewhere further down the line.

Tim Loughton: Who should be the responsible person when it comes to transborder adoptions?

Mrs. Crank: I have said that there should be a named person, as there is in the child protection service. People living in, say, Devon should be able to know that they can go to a named person there and say, ``We've adopted a child and we need a service.'' People may also proactively get to know that there is such a service.

Tim Loughton: That is the responsibility of the host authority, rather than the placing authority.

Mrs. Crank: That has to be decided by the Bill. Who takes that responsibility needs to be argued out and made clear.

David Hinchliffe: Ms Charlton, do you wish to comment?

Ms Charlton: I want to highlight the fact that, from our experience, hooking families into post-placement support and then post-adoption support very early on is very important. We must remember that many adoptive parents do not have contact with social services departments beforehand or with any of the mechanisms around social care. Therefore, they are quite often reluctant to seek help or admit that there is a problem. That may be for a number of reasons--perhaps they have relinquished their decision making around parenthood in the past in order to become adoptive parents.
 It is important to listen to children. Last week, a group was running in one of our centres. One of the young people was asked to make some comments for this Committee. His comment was: ``You can talk about things here so that they do not become problems.'' That is the point. We have to hook people into the services early on so that they have proactive services that are not problem based.

Liz Blackman: On communicating and sharing information between different local authorities, do you believe, Ms Charlton, that it is important that a lead authority takes responsibility so that a child does not easily fall between two stools?

Ms Charlton: That is what happens at the moment. There is an ongoing argument about where responsibility lies. The Bill needs to go further in defining the issue—

Liz Blackman: So would you like a named lead authority and a named person within it specifically identified and clarified? Is that what you are saying?

Ms Charlton: Yes.

Liz Blackman: I just wanted to tease that out. You are saying that the Bill should go further, but I wondered what model you thought would be successful in tackling the problem.

Ms Charlton: We recognise the need for further debate about it. That is the first point. Secondly, if there is nobody to take responsibility—no named person—it becomes a faceless process.

Liz Blackman: So one of the authorities should be named as the lead authority and a person or persons within that authority should also be named.

Hilton Dawson: The support services that we are talking about, which are heavily dependent on a relationship building up, were mentioned previously by Sonia Jackson. She spoke about doing the work rather than assessing situations. Such services would be important to, and valued by, every child living away from home and every carer in every circumstance. Do you see these services being developed distinctly for adopted children or would they be appropriate more generally for children in residential care, whether fostered, adopted or whatever?

Mrs. Crank: For me, those services could be developed for children who are separated from their families of birth. We are actually paid by local authorities to provide them for post-adoption. It is easy to see where the split lies. Interestingly enough, we provide them for local authorities from the point of placement. We provide them for residence and adoption orders, the numbers of which have been shooting up. At one point, people were saying, ``People will not come to you. They will not want your services. Doctors and the people going through residence orders will want to go home.''
 In the first year, 78 residence orders were made in the particular authority and we had 100 per cent. take-up. People were asking for a newsletter and wanted us to keep in touch. They asked us to give them a ring to find out how they were getting on. There was something like a 70 per cent. take-up on our groups. It is a myth that people did not want to be involved. If you started off in a non-stigmatising way, people accepted the services. The authority had a high percentage of breakdown between placement and adoption. In the three years that we have been operating under QP money, we have had 100 per cent. success. Families have moved more quickly to adoption because they know that the support is there.

Jacqui Smith: Under which money?

Mrs. Crank: Quality protects money in three local authorities. There are now approximately 150 placements.

Hilton Dawson: Is that funded by the Government by any chance, Minister?

Jacqui Smith: Funnily enough, yes.

Hilton Dawson: Is it the potential isolation of adoptive parents and the adopted children that you are countering?

Mrs. Crank: I think it is the difference. When they come to the groups, children say, ``What is the difference between these groups and a youth club? It's OK to say I'm adopted here, not that I say it very often, but I can say it. When I say it at school, sometimes people go off and whisper and say, `She doesn't live with her real mum and dad.' I can say it here because we're all the same. I can talk about it.'' That is the difference. We learnt that from adults, so when we designed the services we talked to children and to families and asked them what they wanted.

Julian Brazier: Yesterday and, briefly, today, the matter of regulation of voluntary groups involved in adoption services was raised. When self-help groups of adopted people are running things in their own houses, do you think it is right to make them register?

Mrs. Crank: I do not think that those sorts of groups need to be registered, but people providing professional services, and engaged in services as we are, desperately need to be registered. We are a registered adoption agency and all our staff are police checked because of the safety issues.

David Hinchliffe: May we turn to the access to information issue? Presumably, all the witnesses heard the exchanges in the previous sittings. After Adoption's evidence stated:
 ``We would be extremely concerned if the intention of the Bill was to diminish existing rights of adopted people.'' 
Is that concern shared by the witnesses from the Who Cares? Trust. What are your views on why the change has taken place? We have been trying to establish the background to the matter and there are different views about the extent of the problems that have occurred. Are you aware of difficulties?

Susanna Cheal: Given that a lot worse things happen to children in care than being told the truth, we have no idea.

David Hinchliffe: Ms Robson, do you concur?

Jenny Robson: We have no idea at all. We hope that children have access to their records, and all the information that they need.

Kevin Brennan: Do you see any merit in the two-fold argument that the Department put to us yesterday? First, that with the changing nature of adoption more adopted children may have problems in relation to their birth parents, so are more likely to be a danger to their birth parents if they are given access to their birth certificates.

Susanna Cheal: We cannot see that. We have to speak on the basis of what we have learned from children and young people, that whatever they ask for, they are incredibly modest and very pleased if they can just get a result from a question. We certainly should not overturn everything that has happened before.

Kevin Brennan: Presumably, you deal with birth parents, too.

Jenny Robson: Very rarely. Occasionally, birth families will call us on the helpline but we usually refer them to the Family Rights Group. If it is a matter pertaining to their child being in public care, we will advise and guide them, and give them information as best we can.
 Ms Charlton: There are two points: first, we work with birth parents who are losing their children through the care system and have done for a number of years. We have written and researched the whole area. The assumption that I keep hearing is that, because children are removed from their families and adoptions are made in more difficult circumstances, there will be a problem, a threat or risk to those children. Surely, the very fact that the state has intervened to say that the child cannot live with the family does something to minimise that risk. 
 Secondly, many of these children have already established a relationship with their parents and therefore know things about their parents and their birth relatives. That is not the issue in relation to closing down the record, as written in the Bill.

Kevin Brennan: May I press you on the point about birth parents' access to information about adopted children when they reach adulthood? What are your views on Professor Triseliotis' proposal that birth parents should have the right to contact their natural children who have been adopted when they reach adulthood? Is that the best approach or should birth parents have the right at least to know that their desire to contact their children has been passed on through a third party?

Mrs. Crank: We have been operating in this way for probably eight years on behalf of about 30 local authorities and have had absolutely no difficulties whatsoever. We also operate panels where birth parents, birth siblings and adopters who want to open past adoptions, write or ring and say, ``This is what we need''. We sit down and tell them that this is something that we want to do. We deal with about 120 of these cases per month and we have had no problems whatsoever.
 A lot of children come back, and I will give you an example. One young girl was adopted by her grandmother, and her sister who had disabilities was adopted by a stranger family. The girl dreamed that her sister had died. She knew that her sister had a disability, but they had no contact with each other because the grandmother still had contact with the birth family and there were safety issues. 
 There was a lot of discussion, but we opened that adoption for that child and she was right, her sister had died on her way to Disneyland with a bunch of disabled children. She had read it in the newspaper and had dreamed about it. It would be easy to say, ``No, no, come back when you are 18'', but you feel like you need to deal with these cases humanely and appropriately.

Kevin Brennan: Should the Bill contain a clause that would either grant birth parents the right to contact adopted children in adulthood, or create an opportunity for them to signal their desire for contact?

Mrs. Crank: Our view would be that we would like both or either. We want that because we have been working in that way as intermediary services.

Jenny Robson: We would agree.

Susanna Cheal: With the rider that that would depend on how the child was removed in the first place.

David Hinchliffe: Could you make it clear what you believe?

Jacqui Smith: So that is not an absolute right?

Jenny Robson: It is, but we have a practice model that deals with these matters which has been worked out in conjunction with the local authorities.

Susanna Cheal: I think that the child, having had the most major challenge to overcome, has some rights here—far more than the adoptive parents. The child is dealing with two things: the memories of the past and present, and a new challenge that is like climbing a mountain.

Kevin Brennan: Are you agreeing with my first or my second suggestion?

Jenny Robson: I am saying that it should be qualified—when the child is ready.

Kevin Brennan: So it is the second point.

Jenny Robson: Yes.

Hilton Dawson: Mrs. Crank, you run a service to enable birth families to contact their children who have been adopted. People have to use your organisation to do that. Is that right?

Mrs. Crank: They have to come via our organisation and whichever local authority holds their records. We would have a panel to discuss that. For example, if a child were at risk, we would clearly say no, but we would write to the birth parent and tell them why we were saying no. We have done that in the past when someone who had abused their child was due to come out of prison. We would say ``at this point, no, but we can tell you that the child is well and happy''.

Hilton Dawson: That is a long way from the current position for adults who have been adopted. They can obtain their birth records and make inquiries to locate their parents.

Ms Charlton: The bit that we are talking about is a mechanism for dealing with the risk. We would also say that people need to have access to their birth records as a right.

Hilton Dawson: Of course, I agree. However, you are not saying that birth parents can have access as a right to information about their adult children who have been adopted.

Ms Charlton: They can signal an interest.

Hilton Dawson: May I ask the question about consent that I asked previously? If a child is of sufficient age and understanding, would you support their right when appearing in court to be able to veto a proposal that they be adopted?

Susanna Cheal: Yes, we would.

Hilton Dawson: Do you think that a child should be able to give active consent to their adoption?

Jenny Robson: Yes, we do. Some evidence has been presented from the linkline. A small number--I emphasise that it is small--of young people have called us about adoption. In most cases, we pass them on to another helpline that deals specifically with adoption, but from time to time we deal with cases ourselves. Young people talk clearly about the feeling that they had no say in whether they would be adopted. I am talking about children who were adopted from five years plus. It is clear that they had valuable things to say and useful information about why they did or did not want to be adopted.
 If I could return to a previous matter concerning support, it is clear to me and the trust from the few children we hear on the helpline talking about adoption that young people should have some way of signalling that they need post-adoption support. There is a lot of emphasis in the Bill about the adopted parents being able to signal for support and I stress that the trust does not want mountains of time being spent on assessment. We know clearly from young people, particularly when they enter adolescence--it is a turbulent time for all adolescents, but especially for an adopted child--that they are seeking their identity about themselves and trying to deal with their identity as adopted children.

David Hinchliffe: So you think the Bill needs strengthening.

Susanna Cheal: Yes.

Jacqui Smith: May I go back to the question about ascertaining the child's wishes and consent? The Committee is discussing best practice and how we want the system to develop, but we are also discussing the legal rights and conditions that will or will not be included in the legislation. There is probably not much disagreement around the table on the importance of taking the child's wishes into consideration. That is why it is at the top of the checklist in clause 1. We can talk about how to do that most effectively, but the question on which I suspect we shall have some discussion, and which was raised yesterday--I think that this is what my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson) was asking, but I am not sure about the answer--is whether you think that under the law a child of a certain age must consent to the adoption before it proceeds. BAAF said yesterday that that should not be the position because of the pressure that it may put on the child. Can you answer in relation not to what would be good practice, but to whether you think that should be in the law?

Mrs. Crank: We asked the young people in one of our groups last week how they felt about that. They said things such as, ``Yes, we should be asked. We would still have wanted to be adopted, but we feel we should have been asked. I was 10 and my sister was 10''--they were twins. Many of them said clearly that they should have been asked.

Susanna Cheal: I think that the age is important and the implication is putting too much of a burden on the child for the future. I think there has to be a mechanism in ascertaining the wishes of a child and that it is taken seriously if a child says no. We must look at what ``no'' means. It might mean ``delay'' or ``not ready'' or a whole range of things. I find myself in quite a lot of difficulty in answering that point, because it depends on individual cases and the age of the child. I think we do children a disservice by not taking on board the fact that with the right kind of help and support they can understand these things very early. Advocacy around this would be very helpful in getting the child's wishes on to the table.
 I think if a child instinctively and over a period of time says no to people, we should listen to that. It is quite the vogue now in social services for children to be interviewing members of staff. They make very good decisions. They interview the Prime Minister. They do all sorts of things. They are very good at making judgments, and I do not see why they would not know if there had been a wrong match of themselves without being able to use all the flurry of words that adults can.

Julian Brazier: My question is almost an exact echo of the Minister's. I return for a moment to the original wording used by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre. He did not ask whether you think that the child should be consulted—we are all 100 per cent. agreed that much more consultation is required—but whether they should have an absolute veto. The Minister's question, which, legally, went even further, was whether the child should have to consent formally to the adoption. We are in danger of making bad law if we go as far as saying that. Would you reflect once more on what exactly you are saying that we as parliamentarians should legislate for? Are you really going as far as saying that there should be a legal requirement for the child to sign on the dotted line?

David Hinchliffe: As I understood it, Mrs. Crank said yes.

Mrs. Crank: I said if a child is of age, reason and understanding.

Jenny Robson: Yes, with qualifications around the child's understanding. I am not interested in age. It is about the child's conceptual understanding of what they are saying yes or no to. That is a very important point.

Tim Loughton: How on earth do you define that in a way that will not be challenged out of court by lawyers?

Jenny Robson: I have no idea. I am not a lawyer.

Tim Loughton: The age of 10 is the age of criminal liability. Do you place any particular weight on that, for example as a starting point, or can you not go on numerical ages at all?

Jenny Robson: Bearing in mind the background of some children who come into care and their development—intellectual, social, moral and the rest of it—I think that 10 is okay, but I am going to stay with the view that it depends on the child's level of understanding about what they are agreeing to and not agreeing to. I think we have to be clear about that.

Tim Loughton: Trying to frame legislation in the light of what you are suggesting is a minefield.
 I come back to the point that you made earlier about children being able to call for support services. We are tossing about that great term, but what does it actually mean? How can one filter out not a maliciously vexatious but a whimsical call by a child who falls below your benchmark for being responsible enough to know what a support service is? Can you define the sort of support services that you think that children should be able to call for?

Ms Charlton: The youngest ever caller on our helpline, TALKadoption, which is the UK helpline for young people, was aged five. That was an assisted call by an adoptive parent to help the child know about the service. Other children in the middle age range—say, eight to 13—call our helpline. They do not ask adult questions. They ask things like, ``What does adoption mean—it was talked about once?'' They do not always contact us about a problem; sometimes they just want to tell somebody, ``I am adopted'', then start engaging in conversation about that or ring at another time.
 In a sense, we are looking with adult views at what children need. What children want from support is to be able to access it. We put a quote in our evidence from a child who said, ``We need something 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year; we need to be able to call it if we need to or want to.'' That is the point. Children need to be able to access services pitched at their level and that are responded to appropriately and sensibly by adults on the other end of the phone.

Tim Loughton: You still have not said what that support is. I have a five-year-old child who is perfectly confident of ringing up emergency services, usually when you do not want them, and she could be minded to ask for support because she has been told that she will not get the latest Barbie doll for Christmas. What do you mean by support services that a child as young as five could realistically call for, and be realistically given?

Ms Charlton: The example that I gave of a five-year-old was an adoptive child facilitating that information for the future. The word ``adoption'' has not been heard and periodically, children need to talk to someone about what adoption means to them. We have children ringing up about specific problems on the helpline and they receive much more in-depth counselling. A number of callers have rung up over a period of time.
 We are talking about an 0800 number, which will not show on a phone bill, that children are able to call, perhaps when their parents are not home or are busy cooking tea. Broad accessibility is required. Children could use that number without anybody knowing. All of our helpline information is publicised at the end of TV programmes that children watch in which the issue of adoption has come up. It is important to let people know about things. We need people who can respond by having just a chat—perhaps by giving information on what adoption means and the difference that it brings to your life—by dealing with deeper problems about adoption there and then or by referring them on if the problem concerns something else. We do not get many of the silly calls that you talk about.

Susanna Cheal: We must not think of information being given to children as a one-off exercise. It is something that goes on because children understand meanings at different levels. If you pay attention to the different development stages of children, they keep coming back to things. At a certain age—five or seven, perhaps—they may know that they are adopted but not quite know what that means; they hear about someone else in the playground and want to ask. It is their right to ask because they are facing a different set of circumstances to the adoptive parents. We would support what the previous speaker said.

Jonathan R Shaw: On the issue of whether a child should give their consent, the idea that has entered my mind is some sort of tick box. Best practice says that life story work, a matching process and an introduction should happen. In the main, that does happen. Any panel worth its salt would want to know how the child has been prepared. The idea that we go down a road where a child has not signed off for the adoption process is for the birds. This is not a case for a tick box.
 The theme throughout the evidence has been that good quality assessments are required for people to make good judgments. The relationship between the social worker, the child and the prospective adopter is the basis on which one makes a judgment on a child having made a decision; it is not a yes or a no. Would you agree with that?

David Hinchliffe: By the way, he used to be a social worker.

Susanna Cheal: May I just put a question referring to those circumstances? Could you be absolutely sure in every case that a child knew that he or she was adopted? I do not know that you could.

Jonathan R Shaw: We do not live in a black and white world. These are people, not equations.

Susanna Cheal: The child has a right to know that a big thing has happened in their life and that their status has changed. They may have a new surname or a new identity, but they are still carrying memories from the past. Some configuration of circumstances must signify that the child has understood that this has happened and is willing to go ahead with it.

Jonathan R Shaw: Life story work and questions to the social worker panel would presumably answer that question.

Mrs. Crank: You are surmising that there is good practice everywhere, when the reality is that there is not always; sometimes things do not work out. I can think of a recent case where there were two children being adopted by foster carers. They were adopting the younger child and had had the older child for a longer period of time. They said, ``Would you like to be adopted, too?''. She said, ``Yes.'' The guardian ad litem came along. She had lived in this family for eight years. When she actually got to the court, the judge saw the two children on their own and the family were in a panic because the child was in for one hour. When they came out, the judge said, ``We have a problem''; he told the guardian that the girl was saying, ``I don't want to be adopted''.
 That was a horrendous position to get to. Throughout all of that, nobody had actually stopped and said, ``Do you want to be adopted?'' She did not want to change her situation, and what she was saying to the judge was, ``I don't want to change my name.''

Elfyn Llwyd: On the issue of children's rights, I tabled an amendment to the Family Law Act 1996 to allow children's wishes to be heard in the divorce process on which parent they saw their future lying with, and so on. However, giving a child what is almost an ultimate veto is fraught with problems. Some children develop emotionally quickly and others slowly; you cannot have a rule of thumb about the age of 10 or 12.
 Some children might feel—wrongly, of course—rather guilty about being adopted. They might not want to say that they are leaving their birth parents, and for various reasons they might have attachments to them, even when they have been abused. That will play on their mind. Surely it is better to rely on the checklist to say that the children's wishes must carefully—not in a tick box way—be taken into account in any assessment. The idea of a veto for a child, who might often be immature and persuaded either way by various extraneous factors, might make bad law and bad practice.

Susanna Cheal: The developmental stages of a child are important, and an older child really may not wish to be adopted. The child will be able to handle the ambiguity of knowing that it cannot live at home but does not want to change identity. In those cases, I think that the child should be able to say, ``I don't want this'', and for that to go further. Otherwise, the adoption will break down.

Elfyn Llwyd: With respect, is that not what ascertaining the child's wishes is all about?

Susanna Cheal: In the best practice way, of course. But we do not witness that all the time.

Jacqui Smith: That is why that matter is related to clause 1.

David Hinchliffe: We must finish by 1 o'clock, but can we turn to unmarried couples and adoption? We had exchanges earlier on this.

Meg Munn: I would like to get a view on this. We are especially interested in hearing children's voices on this point, if it has ever come up. From their perspective, do they have a view, for example, about being adopted only by one parent and not by two?

Mrs. Crank: There are four or five children in the group of 16 with whom we have discussed this. Those have been adopted into a same-sex couple. That couple have four children in total, and one other child is with another same-sex couple. Those children said, ``I waited five years for a family'' and, ``They have given us a family and we love them. It doesn't matter what they are like.'' It did not matter whether they were the same sex. I think that they were clear that what they needed was for the family to match and be right for them.

Jonathan R Shaw: Do you think that there is more likelihood of breakdown if a couple is unmarried or married? Do you have any evidence on that?

Ms Charlton: I cannot comment on the evidence overall, but I can say that, certainly with same-sex couples coming forward, the commitment that they show is often to the older children who are more difficult to place, or to the more damaged children. They are also more open to support. We are seeing that as a growing pattern across our organisation.
 In terms of couples living together who are not the same sex, the issues are for the children. The children know very clearly who their parenting parents are, and that is borne out in all the research on divorce and so on. But they also need both parents to be able to give equal commitment. The family that Mrs. Crank describes are in an awful situation because the younger children are adopted by the younger partner and the older children are adopted by the older partner. What happens if that family falls apart? Do you then divide that sibling group into two? What do you do about that, because, in law, there is not equal status? We have to put such issues on the table. If we are talking about wanting to increase the stock of potential adoptive parents for these children who wait, we need to be more realistic about what our society is composed of. 
 Susanna Cheal: We can only comment on what children ask for all the time; ``Someone to be there for me and someone to love me all my life.'' It does not really matter what the configuration of the people is. It is the quality of the relationship with the prospective parents that matters.

Robert Walter: There are two issues; adoption by unmarried couples and adoption by same-sex couples. In the instances that you referred to, are we talking about male or female same-sex relationships?

Mrs. Crank: They were female same-sex relationships.

Robert Walter: Can you envisage circumstances where you would entertain male same-sex relationships, or where such relationships would provide any benefit to children?

Mrs. Crank: It is probably the same, really. It is a question of the needs of that particular child. We have single males who have been openly saying that they are homosexual but who have not got a partner, but who have actually adopted. But that has been what is right for that child.

Hilton Dawson: We have heard a lot of national statistics, but surely you are exploring crucial issues of stability and people's commitments and attachments via their assessment as adoptive applicants. There are marriages that, sadly, break down, and there are cohabitations, whether heterosexual or homosexual, that last permanently. Surely you are trying to find the best adopters, rather than to engage in social engineering.

Ms Charlton: Yes, absolutely. We would endorse that.

David Hinchliffe: I thank all our witnesses for a very helpful sitting; I am most grateful to you.

The witnesses withdrew. 
 Adjourned at three minutes to One o'clock till this day at fifteen minutes to Four o'clock.